King Lear
Author : William Shakespeare
Performed By : Full Cast Production
Publisher : BBC Audiobooks Ltd
Runtime : 2 hours 40 minutes
Categories : Dramatizations
Classic Literature
Shakespeare
Audio Theater
Our Price : $18.49
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Colin Redgrave stars as Lear with Geraldine James as Goneril in Shakespeare's bitter tragedyof loyalty, power and politics.
BBC radio has a unique heritage when it comes to Shakespeare. Since 1923, when the newly formed company broadcast its first full-length play, generations of actors and producers have honed and perfected the craft of making Shakespeare to be heard.
Some of the most stirring scenes Shakespeare ever wrote vibrate with powerful resonance in this grippingly dramatic radio production. Tortured madness, pure evil and the fatal struggle for power grip the listener until the final, shockingly tragic conclusion.
The play is introduced by Richard Eyre, former Director of the Royal National Theatre, and the accompanying booklet includes a scene-by-scene synopsis, full character analysis, brief biographies of the leading actors and of Shakespeare himself, as well as an essay from the producer on their interpretation of the play.
Revitalised, original and comprehensive, this is Shakespeare for the new millennium.
Written By
William Shakespeare
FIRST KNOWN PERFORMANCE
1606
FIRST BBC RADIO BROADCAST
2LO
11 September 1928
FIRST BROADCAST OF THIS PRODUCTION
BBC Radio 3
16 September 2001
RECORDED AT
On location at the Chapel at Lincoln's Inn Fields and at BBC Maida Vale London W9
Fabulous
Daniel from London - 18 May 2007
Just a stunning performance. Corin Redgrave vulnerable, old and mad and at times tender - always utterly convincing. Kika Markham genuinely scary as Regan and Geraldine James almost her equal. All actors always wonderfully clear and sound effects and music only add - never intrusive. Overall a stunning performance.
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Canterbury Tales - Volume III, The
Author : Geoffrey Chaucer
Performed By : Full Cast Performance
Publisher : Select Music & Distribution
Runtime : 3 hours 35 minutes
Categories : Poetry
Classic Literature
Dramatizations
Classics
Short Stories
Our Price : $15.49
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The Friar's Tale
The Summoner's Tale
The Lawyer's Tale
The Seaman's Tale
The Prioress's Tale
The Manciple's Tale
The Physician's Tale
Seven more Tales presented here in unabridged modern verse - an ideal way to appreciate the genuinely funny and droll talent of England's early master storyteller. The group continues its pilgrimage to Canterbury, talking with each other, their interaction mediated (sometimes) by the affable Host - Chaucer himself. Eight leading British actors bring the medieval world into the 21st century, and at least in terms of character, not much seems to have changed!
The Canterbury Tales, written near the end of Chaucer's life and hence towards the close of the fourteenth century, Is perhaps the greatest English literary work of the Middle Ages: yet it speaks to us today with almost undimmed clarity and relevance.
Chaucer imagines a group of twenty-nine pilgrims who meet in the Tabard Inn in Southwark, intent on making the traditional journey to the martyr's shrine of St Thomas a Becket in Canterbury. Harry Bailly landlord of the Tabard, proposes that the company should entertain themselves on the road with a storytelling competition. The teller of the best tale will be rewarded with a supper at the others' expense when the travellers return to London. Chaucer never completed this elaborate scheme - each pilgrim was supposed to tell four tales, but in fact we only have twenty-four altogether - yet, with the pieces of linking narrative and the prologues to each tale, the work as a whole constitutes a marvellously varied evocation of the medieval world which also goes beyond its period to penetrate (humorously, gravely tolerantly) human nature itself.
Chaucer, as a member of this company of pilgrims, presents himself with mock innocence as the admiring observer of his fellows, depicted in the General Prologue. Many of these are clearly rogues - the coarse, cheating Miller, the repulsive yet compelling Pardoner - yet in each of them Chaucer finds something human, often a sheer vitality or love of life which is irresistible: the Monk may prefer hunting to prayer, but he is after all a manly man, to be an abbot able. Perhaps only the unassuming, devoted Parson and his humbly labouring brother the Ploughman rise entirely above Chaucer's teasing irony; certainly the Parson's fellow clergy and religious officers belong to a Church riddled with gross corruption. Everyone, it seems, is on the make, in a world still recovering from the ravages of the Black Death.
Translation by Frank Ernest Hill, [1935-).
