Professor Dan Rebellato recognised for his BBC Radio 4 play Restless Dreams and Dickens adaptation Our Mutual Friend at the inaugural Speakies.
Professor Dan Rebellato speaking at the inaugural British Audio Awards ceremony at the Royal Opera House.
The inaugural British Audio Awards – known as the Speakies – celebrated the very best in original audio publishing at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, on Monday 24 November 2025.
Covering everything from audio drama to audiobooks, the awards spotlight innovation and creativity in the audio industry.
Among the winners was Professor Dan Rebellato, Professor of Contemporary Theatre from the Department of Drama, Theatre and Dance at Royal Holloway, University of London, who took home Best Audio Drama: New/Original Work for his BBC Radio 4 play Restless Dreams.
Broadcast in 2024, the drama marked the centenary of Franz Kafka’s death and follows Max Brod as he smuggles Kafka’s manuscripts out of Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia on an impossible train journey.
Judges praised the work as: “Dramatically thrilling, surreally funny, historically fascinating and philosophically compelling.”
Professor Rebellato reflected on the origins of the play: “The idea began over a decade ago when I read about a trial in Tel Aviv to determine who had the primary right to Kafka’s manuscripts – Germany or Israel.
“That sparked questions about the relationship between writers and geography, nation and imagination. Then I discovered Max Brod’s escape from Czechoslovakia with Kafka’s unpublished works, and imagined it as a Kafkaesque comic nightmare on a long train journey.”
Professor Rebellato also expressed gratitude to the cast for their impeccable performances, adding: “We were lucky to have a cast led by Anton Lesser, Tracy-Ann Obermann and Henry Goodman, who embraced the play’s absurdities and transformations.”
Professor Rebellato also won Best Ensemble for his adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend, also produced by Polly Thomas.
Judges described the three-part drama as: “A rogues’ gallery of 19th-century Londoners … bursting into the listener’s ears thanks to exaggerated and entertaining performances. Dickens himself would have loved it.”
Listeners can still enjoy Our Mutual Friend on the BBC website.
