WNYC is brought to you by. . .

There is a woman, well, I assume it is a woman, it also could be talking software, a machine that speaks what is typed into it. This female gender sounding voice can be heard repeated throughout the day on WNYC, the big public radio station here in NYC. If she is an actual person she must come in one day and spend the whole day reading endorsements announcements, public radio commercials that come before what appears to be each and every program. they even play them during the breaks at 20 and 40 each hour. If this is an actual woman, it's a good gig there are a lot of these, and it probably pays well, a nice union gig. If she is software, she is already paid for, is a slave and works for nothing. Maybe an intern has the job of typing in, entering, what she needs to say.

The thing is she sounds like she always has a cold, like she is suffering from nasal congestion, is all stuffed up. I want to give her a tissue, or a good shot of 12 Hour Nasal Spray so I can relax and stop worrying if this poor woman will continue to get enough air to sustain life. This leads me to believe that she must be software and maybe that the person who played the voice of the software and recorded the actual vowel sounds that make up the synthetic words, had an awful cold on the day she did the recordings. It is also possible that she is in fact a real woman and that she hates what she has to do so much, reading commercials on Public Radio, that she thinks it stinks and is commenting on that by always holding her nose while speaking the lines and therefore producing the stuffed up sound. Her voice also sounds kind of wet, moist. I guess it is the sound that WNYC and it's sponsors love for she is ubiquitous. If you listen to WNYC you know her well.

What do you think? Help me out here. I need to know. Person or machine?

DAVIS & MCQUILLAN - Episode 1

The Wireless Theatre Company presents a very good comedy production by the team of Davis & McQuillan. I really like it. These guys are also fine musicians and the premise is all about the creation of their band. One of them hears the other playing at a local mall and being ignored by the sound of the crowd. He asks if the player wants to join a band. Which band? our band is the answer, so he says yes. I’m using “he” and “he” because I don’t know which is which of the characters Flagrin & Else who they play. Anyway, there is a breezy plot of sorts, but that is not why this show is pretty great. That reason is the clever dialog patter, including toying with musician’s terms, and the ridiculous songs that the two play. These songs are not only lyrically clever, but very well played compositions in parody of various pop genres. These guys can play and fortunately they are both on keys, no guitars.
If this were a hundred years ago DAVIS & MCQUILLAN would be making a good living in vaudeville touring, and touring (provided that they liked to ride in trains, could stand the train strain). They could have honed a great 15 minutes over the years and played it from town to town, for 20 years or so.
But now they are on the World Wide Web. And while they can potentially be heard by more people than a lifetime of touring in the old days, and they probably can’t leave their day jobs. (Busking at the mall?)
BBC Radio 4, are you listening? You should check these guys out.

As we leave the boys, one of them has been captured by pirates. I’m tired of sitting on the edge of my seat on the cliff, walking the plank. I’m ready for episode 2.

Boats on a River

This is a well crafted play by Julie Marie Myatt which I had the pleasure of hearing on The Play's the Thing. It is an LA Theater Works audio adaptation of the theatrical production originally commissioned by The Guthrie Theater.

The subject matter is the Cambodian child sex industry. It takes on the subject through the personal stories of people who work in a rescue shelter where they attempt to rehabilitate the girls caught up in this. We look at their motivations for the work they are involved in. The most curious is an American, Sidney Webb, who we find out is in fact married to a former "bar girl". They have two children, but despite that it is not working out for Mr. Webb. He cannot heal the wounds that she continues to carry. He is a man on a mission to save, and is frustrated by failing with the one closest to him. But why must he be the hero? Is it because of the guilt he carries? There is a scene between Webb and his wife which is the strongest in the play.

There is also a zealous young American who is working for an international rescue agency. His batched raid on a brothel opens the play. He needs to be a hero too. He also fails. The scenes between Webb and this young man are also quite effective.

We hear a recorded diary of an American sex tourist apparently on his first trip. Somehow this part was the weakest in the audio production. That could be because the multimedia video portion of the stage production cannot be used in the audio adaptation. He is a rather vague entity. But then again, this is not a play about the perpetrators. There is plenty of that sort of thing elsewhere and the lack of it in this production is one of its strengths. This is not an exploitation piece.

We hear the story and dreams of the three girls rescued in the raid. Their desires and dreams are small, to have some candy, own a bike, and huge, to have a new life as a boy.

The play uses the most effective way of telling such a story. It focuses on a few people and studies them rather than a just-the- facts sort of agitprop journalism. It is a thought provoking entertainment concerning an issue of global importance. As Julie Marie Myatt says in the interview portion of the "The Play's the Thing" presentation, the issue is not just in Cambodia, but everywhere.

I don't know where this can be heard. I couldn't find it on the LA Theater Works site. Maybe it will show up there later. I heard it via real audio at The Play's the Thing, but the week long freebee stream is now timed out.

Our Lenny

WNYC has been presenting Our Lenny "A 13-day Exploration and Celebration of Leonard Bernstein’s Enduring New York Legacy". It is all finishing up tonight but can be heard online.

Part of the presentation is the wonderful 11 part documentary,
Leonard Bernstein: An American Life. If you care at all about the musical and general cultural scene in the USA in the last part of the 20th Century, or if you are simply interested in listening to a great audio documentary, this one is not to be missed. Fortunately it is available in audio stream form here. I don't know how long they intend to keep it there, so give it a listen while you can.

There are other programs within Our Lenny that focus on particular works with guests commenting. I particularly enjoyed the West Side Story hour with Sport Murphy and host David Garland, because it is, well, it's West Side Story and that music has always made a major impression on me.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

I read somewhere that a production company was preparing a new audio dramatization of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
It occurred to me that I had never read the original. I have seen a couple film adaptations years ago; Disney, one from 1933. I did a google search intending to look for the text. I ran across this production directed by Karen M. Chan. This is the unabridged novel with a full cast acting out the dialogue. They do a serviceable job presenting the material. I particularly enjoyed the Ed Wynn impersonation by J.I. Magnussun as Mock Turtle.
So if you are interested in Alice's Adventures you might want to check it out.

That said, I must admit that I while I find the Carroll's work fantastical, and somewhat grotesque, there is not much drama in it. There is no real danger or threat to be avoided through most of the piece. We simply go from one episode to the next meeting one odd character after another until the ending with the "off with her head" stuff. But even then the threat doesn't seem real, immediate, or particularly critical. There is no real connection between the characters. It's all rather clever and cold.

That said I feel that L. Frank Baum steals from Carroll and does him one better when it comes to drama and characters with emotional connection and depth. While we have the same, it's all a dream ending, the melodrama of the Baum book drives it forward and does a better job engaging the reader/listener. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is the stronger work. Wired for Books, Karen M. Chan and all also do this book which I did not listen to having read the book not so long ago. But this might be a good way to compare one to the other.
Wired for Books also has many audio files of noted writers interviewed.

Caesar Price our Lord

Well, I'm back to listening to BBC Radio 4. I listened to The Material World today on the iPlayer. The iPlayer worked flawlessly. I still prefer to use a stand alone player app if I can. When I use the iPlayer via Safari and continue to scroll other web pages it pauses. This is irritating. But the bottom line is that I really enjoy the BBC radio drama content, and view it as an enormous gift even if the wrapping paper is sticky and annoying at times.


And I'm happy to be listening to the plays again, I missed them.
The Afternoon Play production of Caesar Price our Lord by Fin Kennedy is quite an interesting show. "Roll up!" one and all.

Somehow I feel that BBC radio has covered this sort of topic before and I was expecting something lighter and silly. What I got was a beautifully crafted entertainment that drew me in at the very first with the sound design, Jon Nicholls's music with lot of synth strings, and a little nervous Bernard Herrmann-mish repeating line.
Then Lee Ingleby speaks as Caesar. This first speech set within the music and thunder claps, is delivered with such intimate, soft spoken conviction that I was instantly hypnotized, disbelief suspended, and ready for the ride.
From that first speech Lee Ingleby's performance is so sympathetic, so convincing, the quality of his voice so beautiful, I was really pulling for his character. I loved the guy and wanted him to be the second coming.
Of course, I didn't at all expect him to be. How could it have ended up that way? These things just don't. Yet there was the possibility. I mean, I don't really know how the universe works. There is always the remote possibility the my lord and savior could end up revealing himself to me through a radio drama, one that only I can hear.
This production is a little miracle in that they pulled it off at all and yet did so in a way that I was disappointed when I noticed the time was running out and it would have to end and I would no longer be surrounded (I listened with earphones) by these voices, these sounds. It might have been better with the hour long Saturday Play slot, or the Friday Play if that ever comes back.

Fin Kennedy produced a script that set me to thinking about matters such as the level of trauma in the lives of people in the public eye, and how dangerous that is in a mass media world. How many screwed up damaged individuals are we looking up to, the ones running things, the ones who need the power and wealth to make them feel secure, shelter them from the pain that they can not bare to allow in? How many times have we people followed leaders into death, a death that represents the only hope of salvation for the twisted leader who can't bare to look himself in the mirror and drags us all into his lethal scenarios of destructive distraction?

Yes I know, this is not what is on the surface of the drama. But I am here to present my subjective opinion and tell you were my mind goes during and after the show.
As I said before, this is a beautiful production all the way around. It is lucid, direct. We hear a sound cue, a "whoosh", a change in ambiance that tells us we are in the past, a flashback, or into someone's thoughts, memories.
A fun ride! Thanks to Fin Kennedy, Lee Ingleby, Jon Nicholls, Nadia Molinari and all.
The Afternoon Play
BBC Radio 4
The play can be heard here, through Thursday Oct. 2, 2008, via iPlayer, or whatever one can manage.

Silent Night

Silent Night, by David Nobbs, is in fact not a piece if satiric commentary on the wonders of the dropouts, or "Not Available" we have been experiencing via the BBC iPlayer.
But I have listened to my first Afternoon Play in some time. Not only have I been busy with other things such as the fascination with the USA falling apart before my eyes, but I was actually avoiding the iPlayer until they figured out how to make it work. I don't know if they ever did. I'm scared to try it again.
I listened to this one with a stand alone realplayer thanks to Ross_1170's help on the Radio 4 Message Board Drama & Readings section.

Silent Night is a kind of dark comedy about a man and his growing obsession with the ambient noise in his environment. It begins more or less how one would expect from the subject matter but takes off from there with commentaries on the sprawl of urbanity across the countryside ,the commercial exploitation of what one feels passionate about, the alienation of loved ones, and ultimately left me to consider if the things that bug me are the things that perhaps should also be held dear since they are the elements of life itself.

This it a dense 45 minute show, crammed with ideas. This is a real work of art from a writer who clearly cares deeply about the main issue and where the contemplation of it through the creation of the work leads him. The ending reminded me of a short story by Theodore Dreiser (an old favorite writer) called Free. They both take us to the same place in the end.
Silent Night is a much deeper piece than it would appear, which is what makes it a wonderful play. It also made me laugh out loud a couple of times at the gym where I heard it on my DAP.

BTW: I live in Manhattan and sleep with ear plugs, a eye mask, and one of these digital white noise machines making sort of digital wave sounds at bedside, and the air conditioner whirring in the window. Anything to avoid auto horns. I sleep in an audio prophylactic. So this show was for me.

It appears I'm a fan of David Nobbs since I quite enjoyed Three Large Beers sometime ago, whenever that was on. My comments on that one are here somewhere.

Silent Night By David Nobbs
The Afternoon Play
BBC Radio 4

Richard Martin's Wake-Up Call

Turns out that I'm not at all caught off guard by the little problems with the economy. I've been listening to The Gary Null Show for some years and Richard Martin's Wake-Up Call over the past year or so.
They told me long ago what was going to happen and appears to be happening now.
They seem to be right a lot of the time.

God's Man in Texas

This is an LA Theater Works production. They play their shows on KPCC which is in Southern California. I get it on the WWW.

God's Man in Texas by David Rambo is an entertaining drama having to do with the big business of the religious/entertainment industry.

All the action takes place in a Texas mega church. The revered pastor of the church is aging and on the way out. The committee set up to replace him is having new preachers come in and give sample sermons. The figures, the approval rating, the amount of contributions, and the number of souls saved are all looked at in judging the new candidate and comparing him to others.
But there are other not so transparent political games going on in the church which might, more that these other things, determine the ultimate decision.

This is a full length play and it is amusing and somewhat frightening throughout. This form of TV age religion. so powerful in the USA is examined in an artful, intelligent way that never seems preachy or didactic.

This, like other LA Theater Works productions, is performed before a live audience. I tend to prefer studio productions without an audience, but LA Theater Works radio plays are generally topnotch with fine actors from stage screen and audio drama. They are most often adaptations of stage plays as is this fine play by David Rambo.

It is available via real audio stream on The Play's The Thing site until Sept. 20, 2008. And it can be purchased on CD from LA Theater Works anytime.

The Takeaway

WNYC Radio and Public Radio International has recently offered a new hour long news and information morning show called The Takeaway. It's not a bad product and I used to give it a listen from time to time. But now I can't bring myself to turn it on. It's not the content, but the production and specifically the bumper music that they keep repeating through the hour.

I hate the way it sticks in my head, how I hear it's little galloping rhythm after I turn off the radio and head out the door off toward my work day. It's not that it's a bad little tune, they just play it too many times though the hour.

Please take away the bumper music on The Takeaway then the show might be somewhat worth a listen. As is is all I take away from The Takeaway is an annoying tune I can't shake.

Classified Secret

Classified Secret is an episode from the long running CBS radio anthology series Escape.
This is a very fine little play written and directed by Anthony Ellis. It features a beautifully underplayed performance by Parley Baer as a spy on a bus ride. The whole play is kind of quite with some cold-blooded murderous calculation and action. Max Schmid played it at the top of his Golden Age of Radio Program on August 31, 2008.
You can hear it until Saturday Sept 13, 2008 on the WBAI Podcast page. Just scroll down to Golden Age of Radio August 31, 2008.
It is also available at Internet Archive.
If you are at all a fan of Gunsmoke you might enjoy hearing Bear who plays Chester in a completely different role. Classified Secret is a Cold War spy story and the best in radio melodrama of the period. A very good production all around.

It make a decent substitute while BBC Radio 4 listeners await the sorting out of the iPlayer mess, should that ever occur.

This is the Modern World

I didn't hear the first two of Frank Cottrell Boyce's five Friday Plays having to do with punk and an audience reunion of, like, 27 people from a punk show in 1977.

But I did hear three and four.
Part 3: Damned, Damned, Damned is a prison drama with some interesting characters and plot turns. Here we have an audience member, or rather sort of bouncer, who is now in prison and in spite of his on-going anger problem, or because of it, has given his life to Christ in his very own muddled fashion. He has been invited to the audience reunion and wants to go except that he happens to be in prison. There is some interaction with the younger set in the can when our old punk guy talks about the bands of the past and tells them about the option of glue sniffing which I thought it rather odd. I would imagine all people in prison would know exactly what kind of stuff, that might be around the prison, one can get high from. Then he undergoes a change of approach to the younger set in the can, but it is an uneasy transition with some fits and starts.
Anyway, it was a pretty good play as far as I can remember from a week or so ago when I listened (Ah yes! the subjective nature of listening. Where was my mind that day?).

I have come here today to write about the most recent One Chord Wonders play,
This is the Modern World.
This must be the one that Frank Cottrell Boyce describes as: ". . . a road comedy that lurches into something surprisingly sad for the last ten minutes." It is a rather wild ride, or rather, walk. It's also a father/daughter buddy story and a fish out of water story.
The result is quite delightful with several surprises and some wonderful dialog and one liners along the way. On returning to civilization Muttley states that it was boring before, now it's boring and corporate. I could say that about my home town..

The play has this rather loopy looking-back from the future aspect. I'm not exactly sure why Cottrell Boyce made this choice other than he thought it would be fun to throw in, which I tend to agree. One can hear the joy of the free creative process in this play since it is so much fun and loopy while still dealing with some issues of the day, yesterday and today.
The ending turns into sort of a mother/daughter story. And what is the deal with people who want to benefit the world, and yet treat someone close with torturous rejection?

Frank Cottrell Boyce offers a mission statement that describes his pleasure of working in the freedom of the audio drama form. Well, I would imagine that it doesn't hurt that he had a fellow named Toby Swift in his corner with this project.

Anyway, I'm happy that the Friday Play is back and happy with the One Chord Wonders plays that I've heard and I wouldn't mind hearing the first two if anyone has any suggestions. . .

Do all the plays have a running Police gag? The two I heard both has a point where the protagonist has a little speech about punk music and, if you excuse the expression, Sting. Yes! Yes! Yes!

Leonard and Marianne

BBC Radio 4 visits with Marianne Ihlen. This is the woman from the Leonard Cohen song So Long, Marianne, they have a history that now dates back almost 50 years, and both visit that a bit in this brief radio documentary.
This is not them sitting in the radio studio together, the interviews are recorded on separate occasions.

Now, I should say that I consider Cohen to be a very special artist, and as Marianne says in the program, he is really more than that. And she should know since she knows him well. I mean, it is one thing what the public thinks on one based on the work or publicity, what ones friends and associates think is generally another thing altogether. Cohen is really more than a writer or singer, he is almost a spiritual figure, because some of the work is very strong indeed.

I particularly favor the CD from a few years ago called Ten New Songs. This is perhaps the most listenable of Cohen's song collections. It is a very smooth piece thanks to the wonderful musical settings provided by Sharon Robinson. I kind of wish he would do more work with her. She is on the new one Dear Heather, but with only one song.

Cohen is very interesting in interviews, he should really talk more. In this one we hear him talk about what it was like to be a young writer and how it was a bit of an eye opener that he couldn't make a living as a writer, even a published one. He also speaks very kindly of Marianne, as she does him. Also he seems to have reached a sort of serenity in old age. That's nice.
So check it out if you are al all interested in LC. You can listen again until about Saturday Aug 10, 2008.

Here is some video of Cohen and a longer interview with Marianne conducted in Norwegian. A English translation of Marianne's interview is available here.

Grandma Phyllis with Clay Pigeon

I generally avoid Seven Second Delay on WFMU. Andy does some good work. I quite enjoyed Rat Race (but have never seen Monk), perhaps he should stick to writing. He is not so good on the radio. He has a losing combination of traits being, abrasive and silly at the same time. He also somehow reminds me of Scooby Do, something about his voice.

At any rate I happened to look at the WFMU site at that hour the other day and saw that Clay Pigeon was filling in with someone called Grandma Phyllis and, being a fan of Clay's work, tuned in half way through the program.

They presented a unique and wonderful listening experience simply by talking, being human and authentic. For the first half hour Clay basically interviews Phyllis. As usual he is very good at drawing people out with empathy, projection, and leading questions. This works really well with Phyllis who seems quite comfortable about opening up about herself. Maybe she figures, at 78, "Why not!"

Later they take some calls. The calls are also unique. Particularly the granddaughter who lives with her grandparents and the 63 year old NYC woman.
There is some discussion about what it means for older people to move out of NYC and the dead zone of places that retirees are often expected to go live. Florida is particularly slammed as an unlivable place for someone who does not drive. I loved this discussion because Phyllis really defends being an older NYCer, as does the caller who is 63.
And it is true. NYC is a pretty wonderful place to live, and in the right neighborhood, everything is easily accessible for young or old. One does not have to get in an automobile all the time and I love that.

This is a terrific program. I found myself thinking that Phyllis should have her own show, but really it is special because it is rare, and if it was on every week it would probably become more guarded, or Phyllis would be annoyed by the commitment or something. But what we have is really interesting and fun.

Here it is:
WFMU's The Dusty Show with Clay Pigeon from 7/30/2008

Speaking of Faith

Speaking of Faith is a program distributed by American Public Media. It plays on Saturday mornings at seven on WNYC-FM and is repeated in the afternoon at three on their AM station. The program deals with issues of faith, religion, spiritual matters, and how these interface with human sociology. This is a very good program that is on occasion, dependant on the subject, vital.

Play, Spirit, + Character is this week's repeat offering on Speaking of Faith. This played last year. It is an interview with Stuart Brown, a physician and director of the National Institute for Play. I would like to put this interview in the "vital", "must hear" file.
I would also recommend going to the site and listening to the extended unedited version of the interview.

Brown and charming host Krista Tippett discuss the function of play in human development and what can happen if play is absent or restricted.
There seems to be two directions play is currently going. There is the cram-them-full-of-info crowd that want to give children a leg up against the competition of all the other children and demands that there is really no time for something as silly as play. This is the notion that gives us things like No Child Left Behind. (Work, work, work, no recess, take your meds and get to work.) But then there are others in a growing movement that says the WORK of a child is PLAY. It is essential to the growth of a healthy human.
This is an excellent program. Please don't miss it.

When I was a child I could take off in the moring on my bike and my parents didn't really know where I was and what I was up to. It was wonderful; summertime, freedom!
Then school would begin in the fall.

BBC iPlayer

BBC radio internet users may have noticed a change.
We now have the BBC iPlayer which at a glance seems to afford several more listening and viewing options since they have added video. One must be in the UK in order to see the video. The radio continues to stream and offer Listen Again for a week after broadcast as before.

OK, this is fine and I suppose quite helpful to some people particularly TV viewers in the UK.
But I have a complaint.
I don't like that it is now more difficult to just get a stream to play without a browser plug-in. The reason that I don't like it being linked to the browser constantly is that when I scroll in the browser while listening to the stream the stream pauses sometimes during the scroll.
This is a particular problem when I'm trying to record the program with Audio Hijack.
I use a Mac and Safari. Also if I continue to browse I could run into other sound coming from another site I visit which could get on my recording. There used to be a button on the RealPlayer plug-in that could be clicked and instantly open the program in the stand alone RealPlayer application. This button has vanished and I did some looking around to try to find the "Stand alone player" option.
I failed.
The work around for me: When the iPlayer plug-in opens it does not show the url.
So I go View>show toolbar.
This the top of the window and reveals the url.
Copy url.
Open RealPlayer.
file>open location>paste

The program then plays in the RealPlayer stand alone.
BBC, please bring the "Stand Alone Player" button back.
Thank you very much.

====================

The next day. . .
Well, I spoke too soon. My little work around isn't working at all.
Anybody have any ideas? I looked a bit at the BBC Radio 4 Message Board to see if anyone else was complaining. I could find nothing there.
I have yet to attempt to reconfigure RealPlayer, maybe the solution is there.

Yeah, change=life. But sometimes I just want it to stay the same.

At least BBC Radio 4 put The Friday Play back on except that while it was off I stopped looking to see if it was there so missed some of the One Chord plays which I would have liked to have heard. I probably should read those weekly newsletter emails so I know what is going on.

The Leviathan Chronicles

Christof Laputka is in the process of creating an interesting product in The Leviathan Chronicles. Ok, anyone who spends much thing scanning through this blog will see that I have basically ignored independent productions in favor of BBC stuff. There is a lot more to the audio drama world other than BBC and OTR. There are several independent production companies. These seem to go from a guy somewhere with a mic and an internet connection all the way to production companies that seem to have a budget and a company of people to work with. The Leviathan Chronicles, along with Wireless, is in the latter group with an impressive flash web site and professional sounding tech and performances (for the most part, a scene in Chapter 5 could use a little more work).

Well, I have been called out and told to look into The Leviathan Chronicles and I did. This is a long form continuous science fiction story that is said to expand to 50 chapters of 30 minutes or so each. So far we are up to Chapter 9. I have heard the first 5.

Now the thing is. I'm not particularly drawn to serials, as a matter of fact I tend to avoid them. I favor the anthology series, shows that present something new every time. I somehow find it tedious to have to revisit my old friends, the principals on the series. So I say, give me Suspense, The Afternoon Play, The Twilight Zone, that sort of thing.

But The Leviathan Chronicles is quite good. The scenes are paced nicely, the plot interesting, some characters are revealing themselves to be worth following. I'm not a big fan of science fiction in general and I have heard some things that are kind of rushed, cluttered, noisy and not very lucid. I tend toward the more earth based science fiction, don't care much about space. So here we have a little of both with earth based action and undersea playing outerspace.

Being a New Yorker, I particularly enjoy the scene that take place here. Christof Laputka is a New Yorker and he celebrates it in his script setting geographically detailed scenes in his own neighborhood.

The tech of this production is good. There was some very interesting things going on with the musical score in chapter 5 which was nice because the scene it played under could have used a bit of work. Most of the time the acting is fine. It was a good decision to assign the narration to Samantha Turvill. She is terrific and really adds to the production.

The Leviathan Chronicles is not only for the sci-fi crowd, as a matter of fact I wonder how well it would go over in some fan communities. This is crossover material perhaps of interest to the general audio drama listener (is there such a thing?). This is secret society material that plays well in our current confusing WTF world. Although it has been years since I read him, Leviathan brings to mind some of the work of Robert Anton Wilson. Is Leviathan actually the Illuminati? Is this strange character Christof Laputka actually an Illuminati agent whose mission is to spread disinformation?
I guess we should all stay tuned and see what will happen next. It's an entertaining worthwhile ride (dive?).

Here is an interview with Christof Laputka conducted by Steve Riekeberg at Geek Cred.

The Small Back Room

BBC Radio 4 presents a very interesting wartime drama as this week's Saturday Play. By "wartime" I mean World War Two, oh so long ago, but somehow ever present in that it kind of set the USA in a particular direction that is still a bit of a major problem.

Anyway, this play is not about any of that, yet it is very relevant to our wonderful 21st Century world. It has to do with the science guys who are supposed to be developing exciting new weaponry. There is an amusing scene early on where they take some time out to read "the comics" which is what they call the unsolicited mail-in suggestions from citizens.

The main plot concerns Sammy who is looking into some anti-personnel bombs that go off when found by whomever, like children, non-combatants. There are two fine scene with victims of these bombs. one dead, one soon to be. These bombs made me think of Cluster Bombs. Something that is still being perpetrated on the people of the world.

This is a good play, a gripping hour with an interesting suspense element. I didn't know which way the exciting ending was going to go. Beautifully written, produced and acted.

I never saw the movie version of this Nigel Balchin story.

The Small Back Room is available to "Listen Again" through Friday May 2, 2008. It is a worthy entertainment.

How Now TV

The Friday Play on BBC Radio 4 has been given to Paul Watson for the past two weeks. One wonders what Mr. Watson will have for us next week. Maybe he only has two and we can get back to radio drama.

I was not happy with the Unhappy Countess, not that I listened to the whole thing.
I did listen to all of How Now TV.
Mr. Watson has a long history of TV documentaries. I have not seen any of them that I know of. I suppose they are great, let's assume that. Yet his work n the audio plays is not at all good. Maybe the idea was that he was famous for work in TV and since TV is the god of all media surely he could tackle the easy comparatively infantile duties of writing and directing his own radio plays. After all, in radio you don't have the added worry of picture so it must be easier.
Or maybe the TV has finished with him and given all the work to the younger set so the poor old chap needed a gig and since radio pays so poorly, let him write two plays and double dip by directing them too (still not equal to TV money. I'm sure).

Anyway, How Now TV, was not at all engaging or even slightly interesting. I wish Radio 4 would have produced some scripts by people who know radio and know how to write for radio and let the TV rejects get by some other way

Grace

I've been a bit distracted lately, so it has been hard for me to get to writing about some plays that I have enjoyed in the past few months.
But the Afternoon Play on BBC Radio 4 has come up with one that I don't want to let pass by without a mention.
Grace by Mick Gordon and AC Grayling is a very good play. I loved it. This it the type of drama that I really enjoy. It is a well written, thought provoking, play not far from the back story of current cultural trends. It is beautifully produced, well acted. In short, I think this is about as good as one can do in the 43 minute allotment of the time slot.

Here is the Radio 4 description of the play:

"Issues of faith, love, and humanity are at the core of this intimate family drama in which Grace, a scientist and champion of atheism, is faced with the decision of her son Tom to become a priest. A collaboration between philosopher A.C.Grayling and theatre writer and director Mick Gordon, the characters offer solutions to their deeply opposed ways of looking at the world even as they rage."

I would suggest that you might not want to miss this one. I mean, can good religion be used to defeat bad religion? That is a very good question and one that I have been thinking abut recently, and in the way, why I have been distracted recently.
Don't expect the play to answer this question. Don't even expect the play to explain a major plot point. It doesn't matter anyway and is not the ultimate point of the entertainment.
Grace is available here through Sunday April 27, 2008. Give it a listen.

Hunting and Gathering Our Fast Food

So there was Deirdre Barrett on the radio this morning telling me that the hunter gatherers only had to work, like, three hours a day.
What the hell is wrong with us? How come we have to work so much even while we have all these labour saving machines?
And these hunter-gatherers, what do they do the rest of the time? PLAY!
Then she said something about the bonobos.
Yeah, PLAY.
Right. We've heard how the bonobos play.

Despite all that,
I want to be a hunter gather when I grow up.

Here is a pretty interesting interview from today's Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC.

Tomorrow, Today!

The thing is, I have a good deal of trouble keeping up with the stuff on BBC Radio 4. Especially when there are so many other things that I listen too, and life also has other demands. . .

Here is a bit of fun. Tomorrow, Today! is a very fast paced comedy half-hour. It has to do with the production of a BBC radio science fiction drama series being produced in 1962. I must like comedies about acting companies, the recent Murder Unprompted was quite enjoyable. And in this one we again have vain foolish actors, etc.

As I said Tomorrow, Today! moves fast and covers a lot of plot during all the gags. Two men are killed, people are threatened with loss of work, Commies at the BBC!?!?, ancient theatrical curses, we find out what happen to all the honey bees recently (Atomic Man-Bees!), and the heartbreak on not having your own doll if your part is, "All other voices".
And that's just the first week. I guess we will have to wait until Today, Next Week to see what the future holds.
Check it out: Tomorrow, Today!

We Need to Talk about Kevin

This is a BBC Radio 4 play of the novel by Lionel Shriver, adapted by Anita Sullivan.

Maybe baby? Maybe not?

Perhaps this horror story, this worst case, will tip the scale one way or another.

But really, this between Eva and Kevin is really horrible. To be an unloved child. . .An unloved mother. . .

The Woman's Hour Drama slot is 15 minutes in length. This play ran to 10 parts. I have not been a big listener to the 15 minute multi-part plays, but with this one the format worked quite nicely. Maybe that is because the play is mostly a woman reading her letters to her husband. So a couple of letters per episode seemed to work well. The letters will then sometimes come to life as small scenes from them are dramatized, acted out.

The material is very dark and somewhat unusual. We are not so accustomed to hearing a mother speak so negatively about the experience. I was pleased to find the Lionel Shriver is in fact a woman. I didn't want this negative mother's voice to come from a man.
It appears the some of the motivation for this, the original book, is that Shriver, childless, was personally exploring the idea of having a child before it was no longer possible to have one. This result, in radio play form, is a mother and son melodrama that is quite harsh. It is a horror story of the worst that can happen.
I believe that for the most part it is genetically part of us to love out children. This helps us to survive, to keep reproducing. But does the experience make us happy?
I read a book last year called Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert. In one section he discusses the parent/child issue and presents a graph on the results of two studies on the happiness of parents. It turns out that having children does not at all make us happy. generally the issues involved in parenting are difficult enough that the studies show that the happiness of the couple recedes when the children come and only returns to the same level when they leave the nest. Of course this is not a conscious experience of most parents because we must love our children and do, so we ignore the negatives.

As a listening experience the show is topnotch. Madeleine Potter rather underplays her Eva. That restraint makes her believable, more real. It is a wonderful performance, with difficult material. Nathan Nolan's Kevin always has the right tone of youthful wise ass pain.
So this is strong stuff which will not be for everyone, but I really enjoyed it as a very scary story, well told.
The last 5 parts are available on The Woman's Hour Drama page but will change into something else beginning Monday Jan. 21, 2008.
Here in an interesting interview with Lionel Shriver. She talks about her book.

Snow in July

Snow in July takes us into the same sort of area as Advice for the Living. We have a character who is going to die sooner than the rest of us (hopefully).
Except here the story is presented in dramatic form and the main focus is on the likely to live longer spouse. It is a bitter sweet story of one who is struggling to find a way to accept it all and go on with living.
There is a certain hope in this aspect of the story, an embrace of change, and change is something it is best to come to terms with. Change being a constant.
There is another story here as well. A story of industrial pollution, it's tragic results years in the future, long after the polluters have gone out of business.
In Snow in July we have a beautiful combination of the personal story that pulls us in, and the bigger story of industry, law, and justice.
This excellent play by Alice Nutter can be heard here through Monday Jan. 14, 2008. Just click on the Tuesday button.

Advice to the Living

Advice to the Living gives us the chance to listen to some very interesting. articulate, and educated. sooner-to-be-dead people talk about their attitudes and feelings about life. As a group they are generally rather upbeat about the issue. But I suppose when one is told that the inevitable is in fact imminent one has to become philosophical about having to leave everything . The thing is all of these folk are so bright and well spoken and kind of young, that one wonders what the old, stupid, inarticulate, or not thoughtful types think about it all.

One man says that his illness told him to, "Slow down, you move too fast, got to make the morning last." (Was I wise to take Simon's advice to heart years ago rather than have illness tell me?)

They say at the end that Advice to the Living is available as a podcast. That may be so. But I know that you can listen to the stream here through Wednesday Jan. 9th 2008.

I like these programs on Radio 4 that end with, "If you have been effected by the issues. . .".
I like to hear about these people's attitudes about death. I'm alive, therefore I am very interested in death. I think that is natural. Are there others that hardly give a thought to death? Do they just live or keep themselves super busy for distraction?

One man learned to go with the flow. He says that he is happier going with the river out to the sea rather than continuing to struggle onward and want more and swim upstream against the flow. I'm rather happy to hear the river used in a metaphor like this.

Of only we could have a follow up with some of these lovely people. Perhaps Radio 4 could somehow arrange for a post interview on the other side. . .wherever that may be. (Out at sea somewhere?)

The Rainbow Tribe

The Rainbow Tribe is a short BBC Radio 4 documentary about Josephine Baker and her family of 12 adopted children.
We hear a few old audio clips of Baker. We also hear from some of the children willing to speak in recent recordings made at a family reunion.
Baker adopts the children because she has reached a certain age and cannot produce her own. We don't really go into why it had to be so many and how is it possible to provide a quality family environment for so many. Wouldn't it have been easier on everyone had it just been 3 or 6 children rather than the 12? I think they are mostly boys too. The motivation of Baker seems to have been some sort of idealism, that she would build this merry Rainbow Tribe with all these children. It is the idea of the artist, the dreamer. Is the artist/dreamer a good candidate for motherhood, or is she just living out her ideal in spite of the effect that the process might have on others? Is it that she does it in such a grand way because she feels the power of her celebrity situation moving through her, controlling her decisions?
There are other mothers like this. There is Mia Farrow. I quick look at her Wikipedia page list 14 children with a mix of her own as birth mother and adopted. Is there something here beyond just a big heart? Is there something in the personalities of Farrow and Baker that make them alike in this way?

The Rainbow Tribe describes how Baker got herself in rather deeply, how she had to tour relentlessly to maintain The Rainbow Tribe and the castle where they all lived. We hear how she resisted the natural rebellion of the adolescent children and her desire to hide and deign the more sexually alluring aspects of her early career from them. We hear some of the boys, now men, speak. We are told that others do not want to speak. There are disgruntled, distant members in a lot of families. And these are exactly the ones who I want to hear from.
The program is available to Listen Again through Tuesday Nov 20. 2007 here:
The Rainbow Tribe

The Dusty Show with Clay Pigeon

The Dusty Show with Clay Pigeon , OH My! What can I say about The Dusty Show?
It is a little odd.
There is a host (Clay Pigeon?).
The host does a good deal of talking.
He sounds like he is phoned in or has phone sounding compression on his voice. This gives the production an on-location sort of feel. He talks to some just folks types somewhere in America about their feelings about various things. He is a rather good interviewer of these just folks. Sometimes he plays music. The music is not phoned in. It is put together in some sort of studio. It is an easy but highly produced hour that often does a rather good job at providing interesting entertainment.
The show comes out of the long time "Free Form" New Jersey radio station WFMU. It is extensively archived on the page: The Dusty Show with Clay Pigeon.

Adrift

This is a free download from Theater of The Mindless.
Adrift is about 15 minutes long. It was recorded before a live audience. It is a recording of a live performance. There are several groups that present audio drama as live stage shows. I have never seen an audio drama performed so I don't understand the joys of this mode of entertainment. I understand that there are people who like to attend these things. There is money to be made by doing live performance. There is also the fact that it can be a useful promotional tool for the production company. For these reasons I am all for it. But I still have no interest in seeing an audio drama preformed. I just want it to go on in my mind. If I go to the theater I want to see people moving about and interacting with their bodies.

Anyway, Adrift is a document of a live performance. It almost also works as an audio drama. It might have worked if not for an actor who was clearly playing to the present house. I don't blame her. There they were in front of her. And when one performs on stage one projects so the audience can hear. So that is what this role of Doctor is like and since she is the first voice we hear and has such a critical role, it makes the whole production sound like it was poorly acted. Yet is wasn't or isn't. Others in the cast do a decent job of being audio drama actors stuck on stage. It's just that one inappropriate apple can spoil the bunch. If only the director had given her an opportunity to fix her performance later in the studio.

The play is from an old comic book story. I'm wondering if perhaps accident man was speaking a little too distinctly throughout. Anyway. it's a very Quiet Please sort of thing and I like that genre so I would suggest this one is worth a listen. Besides, it's only 15 minutes. Here: Adrift

Murder Unprompted

Here we have an actor who is also a sleuth. And why not, there are all kinds of detective shows. There is even one where the detective is Holistic.

But this Charles Paris thing is quite good. It really took off for me in the most recent, third episode of the four. This episode was very compressed, filled with good jokes, some drama, and even some sex. It was beautifully written and produced. A pleasure.
The show is very good with both mystery and comedy. I certainly don't know who killed the actor on-stage, but then again I'm not that much a fan of the genre and not that good at cracking the case. We will find out next week.
Murder Unprompted.

As for the Holistic one. It is sort of fun and is getting better but I prefer the Paris.

Solo Behind the Iron Curtain

I watched The Man From Uncle and enjoyed it. But what did I know? I was a kid and on later viewing the show doesn't hold up so well.
Anyway this play has little to do with the show other than the fact that Robert Vaughn was the star of it at around the same time.

What we have here is the story of the production of the film The Bridge at Remagen in 1968. While on location in Czechoslovakia the film company found themselves witnessing the clamp down by the Soviets. Elements in the Czechoslovakian government thought they would change some things, open things up a bit, but the Soviet Union would have none of it, and stopped it.

The play is narrated by Robert Vaughn. He tells his own story. The play was written by Tracy Spottiswoode we can assume from the story Vaughn told her. It is an interesting story, and the narration does a pretty good job of setting the stage for the political stuff. The production then serves as a sort of political docu-drama about the unique position of being an American actor on a Soviet Block country at the time when the hammer comes down. Long time political activist Vaughn is not an ordinary movie/TV actor. He's a smart, informed man and his view of this episode in well worth a listen.
The play is far from a riveting drama, but quite good at what it sets out to do which is basically provide an interesting and somewhat vital history lesson of an important event.
It's too bad that they didn't get Bradford Dillman & Ben Gazzara to play themselves in the drama. That would have been even more fun.

There is some cool music.

The play can be heard at The Afternoon Play BBC Radio 4 page. It is available via the Monday button until Sunday Nov. 11, 2007.

The Woman from the North

Bernard MacLaverty's play takes us to a place and puts us in a position where we don't want to be. It this a horror tale, a suspense? Perhaps it has elements of both. Yet it is about something as common as growing old. In this, it is growing old and powerless. It is confronting a powerlessness when Cassie still feels that she has power, and deserves autonomy. She is sharp and observant. It's just that she forgets things. She only wants to live in her own home with her own things rather than this or another institution. But really she is one of the fortunate ones. Her son has a good job in computers and always a new car so he can probably put her somewhere nice if that is what needs to happen after this evaluation at this place where the doors are never locked and anyone can come in. Yes it will be a nice place if necessary, but does that lessen the horror of it all? I think not.
This play is quite, and rather interior, very effective and sad. I enjoy plays that face up to the issues of the elderly head on. And whatever will happen to me. . .?

The Woman from the North can be found on The Afternoon Play BBC Radio 4 page and is available through Wednesday Nov. 7, 2007. On the The Afternoon Play page click on the Thursday button.

Fame and Fortune

Well, I listened to the first hour of this production. I never saw, " the television classic The Glittering Prizes" so I'm not revisiting my old friends from that show and didn't care about them enough when I met them while listening to Fame and Fortune.
I tried to care. I wanted to care. After all BBC Radio 4 is filling 12 hours of radio drama time and their two most interesting slots that often are occupied with adventurous drama, with this behemoth. I'm mostly a fan of anthology over serials so it makes me sad that we lose two very good anthology slots to this soap opera. It also causes concern about what the BBC has planned for the future of these two drama slots. Hopefully they will return to normal after this is over. I hope someone gets some joy out of all the time and effort put into producing Fame and Fortune. It's just not for me.
Apparently I'm not the only one in distress. Read the thread on the BBC Radio Four Message Board. There are several flames on Fame.

The Saturday Play

Fortunately I found alternative amusement watching The Who Amazing Journey movie last night on TV. It is worth a look for anyone remotely interested in that sort of thing.

Forty-Three Fifty-Nine

This play by Radio 4 drama regular scribe Mike Walker and John Dryden somewhat recalls the case of Alexander Litvinenko last year in London.
In the play the same sort of thing happens in a sped up timeline which is the real-time of the radio play.

What we have here is a tense suspense drama of fine craftsmanship, in writing, performance, and production. Most of the drama is heard via mobile phone conversations. At one beautifully executed moment we hear two mobile conversations going on at the same time.

The emotional drive of the play has to do with a once swaggering care free adventurous covert operator who has found himself transformed through love. His primary concern now is for the welfare of his daughter.

But I'll stop now and say no more other that to suggest that you do not miss this one. It can be found on The Afternoon Play BBC Radio 4 page and is through Thursday Nov. 1, 2007. On the The Afternoon Play page click on the Friday button.

The Tank Man

This play by Julia Stoneham and produced by Viv Beeby has a great story to tell. It is about Exercise Tiger, a preparation for the D-Day invasion during WW II that goes very badly with a heavy body count from friendly fire. It wasn't a battle at all but a rehearsal for one in England, South Devon.

It is also about Ken Small who years later uncovers what happened there and also discovers
a tank left behind and buried in the water offshore.
All this makes the play well worth listening to since it is a great documentary history lesson.
Unfortunately I think the production is not as good as it might have been given a larger budget and a slightly longer time slot. This is a complex story and script. Many of the actor s are asked to do double, triple, (quadruple?) roles, several of which are in yankee american accents. Some of this does not at all sound authentic or convincing and that gives the whole production a kind of pro-am feel. Shaun Prendergast as Small is definitely the pro end with a fine reading of his role.

Anyway, it's a good story about a horrible incident and the remarkable and driven man, Mr. Small, who is obsessed with it all.
The Afternoon Play The play can be heard through Oct. 30, 2007 by clicking on the Wednesday button.

An Interlude of Men

An Interlude of Men by Lesley Bruce is a bitter-sweet drama of two women of a certain age. Maybe it is two women in transition. Maybe they are embracing and then resisting transition.

This was played before a year or so ago on BBC Radio 4 The Afternoon Play. I liked it better this time. Perhaps I was in a more receptive mood. But I still don't know how old these women are. I would suppose somewhere in their 50s. This can be a confusing age. Does one carry on or begin moving into retreat? This is Bren's dilemma. Hilly wants her to move to the country, out there with her from London.

The play also contrasts the difference between the urban and rural life, and what each has to offer. This is shown in the types of media devices Hilly has out there in the sticks. She has no TV, or sound system, well, she does have a record player. Bren is a bit shocked at all this. Yet there are, of course, natural attractions to moving out of the city.

But this is mostly about the relationship. A friendship once close, and now not so close. When all the information is not revealed, there is some jealousy.

The play has an 'On Location" feel about the recording. This works nicely except in the scene in the bathroom which had, maybe, too much reverb off the walls. It made the dialogue a little hard to hear, but this could have also been a problem with the compression in the file I heard which was recorded from the BBC Radio 4 Real Player and then re-compressed into an mp3 for a DAP.

Very good performances by Deborah Findlay and Barbara Flynn who carry this two character play. The Afternoon Play The play can be heard through Monday Oct. 29, 2007 by clicking or the Tuesday button.

Annapurna

BBC Radio 4 The Afternoon Play It can be heard by hitting the Friday button through October 25, 2007

Annapurna By Jod Mitchell is a little three character suspense melodrama set somewhere in the wilds of Nepal.
Tim has just joined Emma from their native England. She has been there for awhile doing research or some such, I don't remember exactly why she is there but it's not that important.

The play gets it drama and tension from the fear of the other, the foreign. Actually it is about the conflict of the dualistic attraction and revulsion of The Other. It explores the emotional power of putting oneself in a foreign land, particularly a poorer one. This is an intriguing jumping off point for the drama.

This listener is well in touch with that sort of fear, therefore I rarely go traveling, and when I do I tend to want to stay in the place for an extended period, live there so I can get more than a surface impression of what is going on there. Who wants to appear as the rich American white boy tourist? Not me.

In the play, Emma has been there awhile, can speak the language, sort of, and has had a taste of local culture.
Somehow this play kind of reminded me of the movie version of Deliverance. That was Americans in a foreign part of their own country. But I would imagine that it is a common experience in our modern times of rather inexpensive jet travel and such. The global village that really is not one, especially when one gets away from the cities.

The sound design of the play is rather attractive. The play is worth a listen and rather entertaining.

Belongings

BBC Radio 4 Description:
Two brothers breaking and entering face an awkward dilemma when they find the wife of their intended victim dead, with a suicide note by her side.

Michael ...... Conleth Hill
Gerry ...... Nick Danan
Audrey ...... Cathy Belton
Carl ...... Mark Lambert

Director Eoin O'Callaghan.
--------------
I first heard Belongings by Dominique Moloney in the summer of 2006. It's funny, I can remember where I was when I heard it. In an automobile in the Catskill Mountains in New York State. It was a beautiful day but the road we wanted to take was closed due to recent heavy rains and flooding. We eventually got to the scenic waterfall, our destination. There were tubs carved out of the solid rock for bathing in the whirlpools and great fun to be had.

Maybe that is why I have a particular fondness for this play. I listened to it again this week in an entirely different setting. It's really a rather silly play. So silly that at any moment it could have converted into a comedy. But for all the silliness of the twist and turns of the plot, the writing is clever the dialog utterly entertaining , and the performances convincing and engaging. I think it is the relationship of the characters that make the thing work so well for me. Dominique Moloney did an excellent job on this one. I'd like to hear more of her work. It's funny, before looking her up just now, all this time I had assumed that play was written by a man, but come to think if it, of course it wasn't.
We have the breaking-in brothers, the poisoned and seductive Audrey, and the fit to be tied, it doesn't work out so well for the husband, Carl.
The acting and direction is very good. I particularly loved Cathy Belton as Audrey, one broad not to be fooled with.
In the end, after a couple of goes, I can't fully tell you what it was all about, what happened, but that's all part of the fun of this very entertaining silly crime noir piece.

BBC Radio 4 The Afternoon Play The play is only available through Sunday Oct. 21, 2007.

House Rules

BBC Radio 4 The Afternoon Play Oct 10, 2007

This play involves tough guy card gambling stuff. I don't know why card playing is a concern of tough guys. It's not like it is at all active, manly, but is people sitting around a table for hours looking at numbers and pictures on little cards.
There is money involved and we know that tough guys are always interested in money. Why is that? Maybe tough guys are really scared little boys worried about their personal security.
That said, I didn't find this play very interesting at all. It could have been that the tough guys were too tough, and not at all interesting enough for me. One of the guys has a wife and they have a couple of scenes but they are of low emotional content. Mostly just disapproving wife stuff that didn't add much conflict, or doubtful self-searching, to the proceedings.

I guess the only thing I like about manly gambling stories is when they are really addiction stories. This isn't that.
If one is really interested in the game itself there in no satisfaction here since the play skips the game entirely.
It's really a father-son story.
There are Joe Strummer tunes, and he was pretty great.

Solomon

This Solomon is arrogant in her power to make ethical decisions. It is what she does for a living, she is a pro at telling people what is the right, ethical, thing to do. She has no trouble with it, not a sense of doubt as we hear her working in a very flip and easy way as a commentator on a modern, speedy, crass, radio phone-in chat show. In the first scene she is presented as a bit of a know-it-all, on top of the world and her field, with a perfect life. But soon we see that all is not well. Her aging father is failing, his mind is going, and she is being harassed by someone unknown through disturbing emails and phone messages. She is also to become the first "ethicist" to testify in the British court. She is preparing to be an expert witness in a Terri Schiavo sort of life-or-death court case.

There is a lot going on in this tidy, brisk, little melodrama. It is chock full of socially and politically relevant issues. But Peter G. Morgan manages to squeeze it all in. The only bump I felt was early on with the introduction of the husband of the hospitalized woman. He seems to switch tones all too abruptly from a position of the need to let his dying, or dead wife go to someone who wants to keep her living. Clearly the character would have such a conflict but as it unfolded I was so taken aback I wondered if I was listening to someone altogether different talking, but this could also be the fault of the choices that the actor took in his reading of that section.
The questions of ethics, death, and torture really hit home for our Solomon as we hear her change, and become less know-it-all and brash by the ending.
The Friday Play BBC Radio 4
On Listen Again Oct 12 through Oct 18, 2007

Sex After Death

In Sex After Death, Mark Lawson has fertilized what could have been a routine sentimental daddy's-dead-but-life-goes-on plot with unexpected twists that make the whole thing a tight and very enjoyable 45 minutes of compelling entertainment. He takes us into the ethical issues of concern in the use of the dead man's sperm and has several characters attempting to act on what "feels right" to them.

The listener might wonder at the general morality and selfishness involved in extensive medical intervention to produce a child in the couple that is for one reason or another unable to conceive. Where are we at now, 4, 6 billion? How hard should we work to produce more? Or is it all about personal desire? Is that what is right, what is important? Does that 'Feels Right"? But here we are in the 21st Century and we need to make the decisions on the fly, without the benefit of longstanding human tradition. In olden times, supposedly, the folk acted as they always had within the culture of the tribe. No more.

The play doesn't really offer the answers but presents the questions. The listener is free to mull them over on his or her own after hearing a few sides of the debate presented in the course of the drama. Or not worry the issues at all and just enjoy the well written, acted, and produced drama. I think it will take you where you don't expect to go. The ending, the final line in the play, is very satisfying.

The Afternoon Play BBC Radio 4 Sex After Death is available to "Listen Again" through Wednesday Oct 17, 2007.

Man of Steel

In Canton, Ohio when they didn't need us in the steel mills any longer, we were "Laid Off".
In Sheffield, we were the victims of "Redundancy".
Which sounds more harsh? "Laid Off" somehow sounds a little softer to me. "Redundancy" sounds more personal, more final. "You are redundant." Sounds like the end of ones working life, or life, period. "Laid Off" somehow has the glimmer of hope that one could actually be brought back to the job when times get better. It's as if it is only temporary.
My father worked in a steel mill in Canton, Ohio in the 1950s and 60s. I remember him being laid off temporarily and then brought back to the same job a few weeks later. Perhaps that is why I didn't see it as something final. There was just a temporary slow down in the industry. Maybe people were not buying so many cars that year or something. He left before the bottom eventually fell out of the steel industry in Ohio, in the USA. He left before those laid off were not brought back again. This, the final lay off, was probably about the same time as the time-set of the recent The Afternoon Play production of Frances Byrnes's play Man of Steel.

Man of Steel, as the BBC Radio 4 The Afternoon Play page description reads, is,
"Set in Sheffield in 1982, the drama is based on the author’s own experience and that of her father and many of his friends as their lives are wrecked by redundancy." The play is the view of the teenaged daughter as she sees her father struggle as his life's labor is taken from him. It is a job he needs to help sustain the family and, maybe most importantly to the emotional environment of the story, his self esteem within it. Byrnes also pulls out wider to show the situation politically and culturally of the time setting. Producer/Director Kate McAll uses pop tunes of the day to provide a sense of atmosphere. This is done in BBC Radio 4 productions so much that it is perhaps wearisome at times. The play felt a little too short with a very strange ending that serves to demonstrate how cold the culture can be to the ones made redundant.
It is a good clear picture of what happens to the workers and their families when an industry has moved on.

Talkin' 'Bout My Remuneration

Sometimes it seems that the music documentaries on BBC Radio 2 are kind of patched together bits of old interviews about old pop stars. Sometimes that can be quite interesting and I have heard a few that I enjoyed such as the story of Lionel Bart's life and some of the Glen Campbell multi-parter.

But here is one that is quite unusual.
Talkin' 'Bout My Remuneration discusses the economics of being a musician working in the genres of popular music. It might serve as an eye opener for those who believe that there is any sort of money to be made in this field because, well, there basically isn't. There is for the very few. If you can find your way in life to being involved in one of these nostalgia bands (Police, Stones) that tours the world on the strength of the memories of the teens of forty years ago and who are now rather aged and somehow silly enough to cough up $200 a pop to see that band live playing that lovely tune from their golden youth, well, there is of course big money in that.
Frankly I think the concept of making it as a working musician is a pretty amazing distortion of human reality. Yet another strange feature of mass, centralized, post industrial culture. After all for all the history of mankind up until the last couple hundred years or so music was made by the people. By Farmer Joe who also played the fiddle at the Saturday night hoedown. Then there was the golden period of vaudeville where many entertainers were employed touring the country going theater to theater doing the same shining 15 minute act. Now most entertainment comes via the mass media, the locals have found their gigs outsourced to centrality via recording technology.

But in a way, if one wants to make music one is still mostly a folk artist. I'm not talking about "Folk Music" as a genre, but people who make all types of music, electronica, whatever, and support themselves by other means. This is folk art.This is what humans have always done and still do even with all the noise from above.

Anyway, Talkin' 'Bout My Remuneration is a fascinating hour that I would think would be of interest to musicians, and those who enjoy them and find them and their business interesting. The program will be available to listen to via RealAudio player through May 28, 2007.

Quite Time

Earstory has been a bit quite recently. The reason for this is the production of the Tickled to Death product line has picked up. There is new music and a video in production, and all this takes time. So stay tuned.

Meanwhile there are a few thing that I would like to direct you to The OTR Podcast. There are a few interesting episodes of the CBS Radio Workshop available there. Of particular note is a two part production of Brave New World. This is introduced by Aldous Huxley himself. Also a play by Huxley and Christopher Isherwood called Jacob's Hands. Also John Cheever's story The Enormous Radio is pretty amazing in that is really reflects the hazardous media environment in which we find ourselves. All these things are from 1956 and well worth listening to. Oh and The Ex-Urbanites is also interesting.

The Radetzky March

Drama on 3 BBC Radio 3
A radio play adapted Mike Walker from Michael Hofmann's English translation of the novel by Joseph Roth.
We are three degrees separate from the original material here. I have never read Joseph Roth's novel and the only thing I know about it, other than the radio play, is this essay by Michael Hofmann and a brief scan of the customer reviews of Hofmann's translation of it on Amazon.. So I can only really write about what I heard.
This is a fast paced two hour historical radio drama that sweeps through some 40 or so years at the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. That might not seem all that inviting, but it is a rather entertaining listen. We are involved mostly with the Trotta family, three generations of them. Actually it's the men of the family. This is a very male story. Woman pop up briefly now and then, but we never enter into their lives as we do the Trotta men. The first Trotta is a soldier who saves the life of the emperor on the battlefield. The bulk of the play concerns his son and grandson. The son of the hero is a commissioner of some sort involved in the government. The grandson becomes a soldier and his father grooms him on how to be a gentleman soldier which involves buying six suits, and a nice cigarette case. The grandson is told he should smoke cigarettes and drink Hennessy so he won't stand out and will be one of the good ole gentlemen. The grandson becomes quite good at some of this, or at least involved.
This is really about a time of transition from the Dual Monarchy as we move into the violence of the 20th Century and the old order crumbles away. It does a good job of showing some of those changes and how change itself sweeps us all out of the was eventually. The play has a nice balance between sentimentalism for the past and cynicism about what humans do to one another in general. I believe I know a little more about the time and place after the experience of the play. We hear the tides of change as the grandson is called upon to deal with labor unrest. It's a well done scene showing the human blunders of the agents of authority. It's cop work , not gentlemen soldier work.
A character of Joseph Roth appears in scenes in a cafe writing the very novel we are listening to. It's a useful dramatic devise that helps make the piece clearer and more accessible.
Once again the BBC presents us with a well crafted production with many of the actors undetectably doubling, even tripling in their roles. I was completely convinced of the time and place by the soundscape atmosphere. The play was directed by Tim Dee. It is well worth a listen.

It can be heard here: Drama on 3 through Saturday April 28, 2007

12 Shares

A radio play by Dennis Kelly

The Afternoon Play BBC Radio 4

Here is an example of a rather obvious, simple conception. It's the sort of thing that seems obvious after it is heard. One can imagine writers of radio plays around the world striking themselves on the forehead, "Why didn't I think of that?"

Dennis Kelly is the one who thought of it and produced a brilliant script.
Oh, yes, the concept. The play is made up of exactly what the title says it is. The story is told through the course of 12 Shares at an Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting. The form of an AA meeting hardly ever varies. It involves someone speaking first, telling their story, and followed by an open time where others in attendance speak about what they are going through. This is the brilliance of the concept of the play. It is a story told completely naturally in the course of a series of AA meetings. Dennis Kelly does not need to resort to the sometimes awkward template of narration to illuminate the radio play. The shares tell the story.
In the play we hear Kate thank the unheard speaker by name and then set into the latest events in her own story. It is a moving story of personal and family struggle with substance abuse. For the most part she speaks openly of her hopes, fears, and emotional insecurities. Most of the issues involve relationship with others, the interface with the outside world.

The believability of the play is enhanced by Sophie Stanton's measured, emotionally full, yet nuanced performance as Kate. She hits just the right pitch in a role that all to easily could have veered toward the melodramatic.
The play is directed by Pam Marshall. One gets the feel of the room in what is basically a one woman show.

A special note on the music by Nina Perry. In the theme she loops and digitally distorts the voice of Kate along with a gentle yet insistent beat, and a couple of simple melody lines. These sounds serves to place us in the emotional atmosphere of the play, actually help to create it. It would be lovely if more of the BBC radio plays employed Nina Perry's work. Too often BBC plays resort to clips of old pop tunes to evoke time and setting. The 12 Shares Theme as well as clips of more of Perry's beautiful work can be found here: Nina Perry

12 Shares is available to listen again through Thursday, April 26, 2007: The Afternoon Play. Click on the Friday button.

Entertaining Mr Sloane

By Joe Orton

BBC Radio 3Drama on 3

As director John Tydeman says in the informative introduction of this first radio production of the 1964 play, this is not an important play but an entertaining one. We also learn that Dudley Sutton played the 19 year old Sloane in that first production. Here he is Kemp, the family grandfather.

I saw a production of this in New York less than 10 years ago. It didn't make much of an impression on me then. I think I was in a cranky mood with my date in a relationship that was going bad. But today I quite enjoyed it for what it was as I listened at the gym on an mp3 player. Actually it was sort of the perfect way to hear it, while working out. There is a scene where Ed is asking Sloane about his workout habits.
In the early scenes Sloane is a sort of projection screen for the lustful desires of the other, older characters in the play. This to me was the most interesting part of the play. It starts to explore that blind and unseemly atmosphere of lust. The object becomes what they want him to be. They are not at all able to see what he really is. This sort of lust is not at all attractive, the vampire like need of the old to connect with youth as if somehow it will give them a new lease on life. He uses this, his attractiveness, their desire, to his own advantage as he plays all the bisexual angles within this odd family. One thinks that he might just win the game until the tables are turned on him and he proves to be so deeply amoral, actually criminal, that he entraps himself in the web they weave. He will be their plaything, their time-share slave.

As they stated in the introduction, it's not a great play. But it is beautifully paced, has some funny, witty dialogue and some fun turns of plot. Some of these plot twists would seem a bit melodramatic unless one considers what happened to poor Mr. Orton just three years after this piece was written. This is a fine and entertaining production.
It can be heard here: Drama on 3 through Saturday April 21, 2007

In Denial: The Story of Paul Blackburn

A radio play by Kevin Fegan
The Friday Play BBC Radio 4

I invite you to take a trip to hell. Well, it is not an actual trip to hell, but rather the story of one boy's, one man's trip to hell. This is not the hell that somehow was put into the cosmic order of things by God (did God invent Hell?), in order to punish the bad people for eternity with fire, brimstone and all that sort of thing. This is the hell that humans in authority, our agents on high, our representatives, and therefore WE innocent citizens, have willfully created right here and now on earth in our dear, smug, self-satisfied, and self aggrandizing, democratic states. It is where we GOOD PEOPLE send our BAD PEOPLE.

Something clearly has to be done with people who are a danger to the rest of us. Yet that something turns out to be time and again treating them or allowing them to be treated brutally. We all know this is going on, we hear countless stories about it year after year, it's not big secret. People joke in media about how so and so who has been bad will be sent away to suffer rape inside, as if that is what they deserve for the wrongs they have done. We are not even concerned that most of these people will one day be released, set free, in a more distorted, brutalized, angry, vengeful, and dangerous condition than they were when they went in. After all they are BAD, otherwise they would not be there, would they?

With the story of Paul Blackburn we hear the horrifying quarter century saga of one who happen to fall into the hell that we made. This is the story of a young teen boy convicted for a brutal sexual assault and his time inside. He is convicted even though three others confessed to the crime, he is convicted even though the police did not at all follow legal procedural guidelines for the handling of youthful suspects. And he is released 27 years later and exonerated and with little support, cast out into an alien world of freedom to get by as best he can as a brutalized, damaged, traumatized victim of state justice.
This is not a pretty or uplifting story, but one that we have to keep hearing time and again until something is done to avoid the continuance of convictions of the innocent, and the unjust and disgusting criminal brutality of the guilty.

In Denial: The Story of Paul Blackburn, the play by Kevin Fegan. Is a very well written and produced piece. The cast with Adrian Bower, Gerard Kearns, Robert Pickavance, Glenn Cunningham gives the docudrama a rare and heartbreaking authenticity.
The atmospheric music by Andrew Diey adds much to the feel of the play without calling attention to itself.

It can be heard here through Thursday April 19, 2007:
The Friday Play BBC Radio 4

More information on the Blackburn case can he read here:
: Innocent-FIGHTING MISCARRIAGES OF JUSTICE

Energy Swap

Energy Swap is a half hour, three part BBC Radio 4 factual described as this on the page for the program:

"Two families, one from the heart of gas-guzzling Texas and the other from rural Cheshire, exchange their lives for one week to compare their carbon footprints."

Featured are the UK Thomas family and the Spencers in Texas. Mr. Spencer is an airline pilot, his wife works as a food caterer for film crews. They have two children. With the UK couple, he is a building surveyor, she works for an environmental group. The Spencers live in a big house near Dallas in a gated community. They have lived here for three years and have never seen their neighbors. These people live in a consumerist bubble. Basic information apparently can't get through the entertainment news gate. I was a bit shocked in the part where the English woman is showing the Texan woman what a florescent bulb is. She seems to have never heard of it.
Mr. Spencer, the airline pilot, doesn't believe in global warming, or he doesn't believe that human activity is the cause. I there is little doubt that climate change is going on, but room for doubt that humans are the cause. But does one have to believe in global warming in order to see the value of conservation? And by the way, what's the deal with conservatives being the least interested in conservation?
The Spencers use over $800 worth of electricity a month in their uninsulated house. This is a rather stunning fact in itself. Well, at least they seem somewhat open to learning something.
It's a fascinating half hour and we have the other two parts to look forward to in Energy Swap.

Joseph and Joseph

A radio play by Oliver Emanuel

The Afternoon Play BBC Radio 4

As this began it reminded of a recent radio play that had the theme of a young teacher who was clandestinely photographed by a camera phone while having a one-off sex act with someone she had just met at a party. That play was a straight ahead from-the-headlines current horror sort of story.

Joseph and Joseph starts out in much the same way as we meet mild mannered accountant Joseph Taylor and his fiancé going over the credit card invoice. She is very angry about his trip to Nice when he had told her he was going on a business trip somewhere much less glamorous. And what's is with these expenses in Nice? What is he doing spending an enormous amount of money gambling, drinking, and buying a very expensive wristwatch? Joseph is completely baffled by the matter. He is also canned from his job for stealing money from a business account. Our boy is in trouble and doesn't know why. Arriving home from his dismissal his fiancé is waiting for him with a postcard from a woman in Nice. It's a love note. She misses him and wonders where he is and why he hasn't contacted her.

It takes Joseph a few beats more than average to catch on that he has been the victim of identity theft. He jets off to Nice to try to get to the bottom of it. Here the suspense continues as he looks for the thief Joseph. But happily this turns out not to be your average horror-from-the-headlines show. Oliver Emanuel takes us on quite a trip. Sometimes there is a bit in a bump in continuing to suspend disbelief with the turns of the plot. But all in all it is a pleasant diverting trip to Nice that just might get the listener thinking, "What if. It there another way?"

This is a fine, fully realized production director Colin Guthrie. Shaun Dooley, Helen Longworth, Christine Kavanagh, Sam Dale do a very nice job with the acting chores. Give it a listen.

It is available here: The Afternoon Play BBC Radio 4 Through Tuesday April 17, 2007. Click the Wednesday button.

Three Large Beers

A radio play by David Nobbs
The Afternoon Play BBC Radio 4

If I were to introduce someone to their first radio comedy play Three Large Beers would be an excellent point of entry. First radio comedy play? Yes, well, here in the good ole USA we don't do such things. But praise be to the gods of 21st Century technology who control all the satellites, fiber optics or whatever is involved, for now we have the gift of the internet and the delight of North American, and global access to The Afternoon Play . This is an anthology series of plays 45 minutes in length. Some days these 45 Minutes are longer than others. Today April 10, 2007 the 45 minutes feels more like 10 minutes. The comedy Three Large Beers is a tasty slightly dark rich brew that is full bodied with a thick handsome frothy head. We take a sip and feel amused, somewhat lightheaded, after a nice swig we begin to giggle, half way through we are fully engaged and can't help but laugh out loud. By the end we are tapping our glass on the table top and begging David Nobbs, "I'll have another please"

This is about as good as I have heard. It features solid performances by Tim McInnnerny, James Fleet, Jeremy Swift, and Kulvinder Ghir under the direction of Turan Ali.
But really the man of the hour, of the 45 minutes, is a young fellow named David Nobbs. With Three Large Beers he serves up his very first original radio play. But there are novels and television work going back, back, back, to almost the mid 20th Century. Check out the young fellow's brand new site: David Nobbs is a master craftsman artist.
"Please sir. I want some more."

Three Large Beers will be available via all the satellites, fiber optics, telephone lines, wifi, what have you, but only through April 16, 2007. At The Afternoon Play web page.
Just scroll down and hit Tuesday. Don't miss it!

The Employee

A radio play by Sebastian Baczkiewicz

This week's The Friday Play on BBC Radio 4 is a replay of The Employee.

This is beautifully produced and directed by Marc Beeby. He gives it a very realistic soundscape that helps the play work. It doesn't SOUND silly and is acted with total conviction with a fine cast headed up by Ron Cook as Iain "With two 'i's.". Mr. Cook's performance in itself makes the play worth a listen. Our Iain is a very loyal worker. He is a building maintenance man at The Elm, a high tech, climate controlled, terrorist proof high-rise office building. But he is not loyal to the managers above him or the clients who rent space in the building. He loves and owes his loyalty to The Elm itself. Is this not what we want in a building, a man who loves it and knows it very, very well? It would seem that this would be the best except that what is more important to others in the pecking order. Those above him know little about the actual function of The Elm, but that doesn't keep them from lording over our Iain "With two 'i's."
This is the conflict in Sebastian Baczkiewicz's play which comes off as a sort of mix between a Stanislaw Lem novel and the Capra movie It's a Wonderful Life (maybe with a touch of The Marx Brothers or Olson & Johnson). But this is not all silliness. There are indeed some very dark comedy elements in The Elm. If you are a upper or mid level manager of others you might want to stay away. It might just increase your paranoia about what 'They" are really up to. If you are one of the rest of us you might find in much more amusing and somewhat familiar.

It is available at BBC Radio 4 The Friday Play through April 12, 2007.

The Pledge

Dare to compare?
Here we have an opportunity to compare a movie with a radio play.
BBC World Service: World Drama presents The Pledge by Friedrich Durrenmatt and dramatized by Steve Chambers. This fine production heard last year on BBC Radio 4 is a detective story about an illusive child murder. There is a false accusation of one of the usual suspects, this one who conveniently happens to be the one to first stumble upon the corpse of the victim. The play shows how the cops just want to get the job done, solve the case and move on to the next thing. If not for the retiring Detective Matthai's insistence and pledge to find out what really happened, our killer would have been free to kill again and again, or would he?

So the comparison? The story was made into a movie directed by Sean Penn in 2001. Matthai becomes Jack Nicholson's Jerry Black in the Americanized version . It has a rather star studded cast. It has been a while since I've seen the movie. It is over two hours long and one has to look at a screen that long to watch the thing. The BBC Radio version gets the job done in an hour. Maybe it depends on how one wants to spend one's time. Or if one sees entertainment as more a pastime where the more time that passes the better, or just to get the basic information and be done with it. Or maybe it depends on if one wants to see things in the imagination or displayed in explicit fashion on a screen. EarStory Radio Review votes for the latter. Besides the Swiss setting was just somehow more convincing without the intrusion of all those familiar star faces.

Either way it's a good story even if one in not particularly interesting to the detective cop mystery genre.

The play is available to "Listen Again" through Friday April 6, 2007. BBC World Service: World Drama Page