2UE: Lux Radio Theatre: Nineteen Eighty-Four (starring Vincent Price)

SFFaudio Online Audio

This rare recording features Vincent Price starring in an Australian radio adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984. Produced at the Lux Radio Theatre in Sydney, Australia, in 1955 the interesting twist with this version is that the narrator is split-off personality of Winston Smith’s, and that personality is played by a different actor.

2UE Lux Radio TheatreLux Radio Theatre – Nineteen Eighty-Four
Adapted from the novel by George Orwell; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 53 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: 2UE
Broadcast: 1955

Produced by Sterling Macavoy
Adapted by Morris West
Directed by Paul Jacklin

Cast:
Vincent Price (Winston Smith)
Margo Lee (Julia)
Lionel Stephens
Alexander Archdale (Charrington)
Guy Dulman (Parsons)
Dorothea Dunstain
Gordon Chayter
Rupert Chance
Maurie Powell
Leonard Bullan
Allan Herbert
David Netheim (narrator)

[via VincentPrice.org]

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #224 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Exhibit Piece by Philip K. Dick

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #224 – Exhibit Piece by Philip K. Dick; read by Mark Turetsky. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (40 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Jenny, Maissa Bessada, and Mark Turetsky.

Exhibit Piece was first published in the August 1954 issue of If: Worlds Of Science Fiction.

Talked about on today’s show:
“Hi, I’m the main character”, a pocket universe, a time portal, is the cold war a 22nd century office feud?, looking back at the 1950s, 1950s nostalgia in the 1950s, middle class white guy, cobalt bombs, the boogeyman, global warming?, Jesse needs to listen to the fear propaganda, a historical perspective, how to build a cobalt bomb, what was he doing in there?, was Miller herded into the 1950s world?, the authority figures, the TV, the newspaper, the dreamed are secure until the dreamer wakes?, Star Trek, Barbara Adams, talking to her hair?, Trekkies, is Miller delusional?, a crack in time, a nested world, living inside a museum exhibit with a confabulated wife and children, Berkeley, California, San Francisco, New York -> N’York, public transportation (the bus) -> pubtrans, the Wikipedia entry for Exhibit Piece, citation needed, does the entire story happen in the 1950s?, did Miller have a psychotic break after reading the newspaper?, TOTAL WORLD DESTRUCTION AHEAD, the missing newspaper, Philip K. Dick’s old house, dog food for dinner, the world of the neighborhood,a mistake the Oakland Daily, I didn’t get up until noon anyway, the newspaper as the binding point, is the psychiatrist right?, the names, Grunberg, Fleming, Carnap, the philosopher Rudolph Carnap, logical positivism, the slippage of words, natural deductive logic, death panels, a priori, philosophy, Newspeak in reverse, double plus good, “Dig me?”, the Eisenhower administration, Jazz cats, the 22nd century is pretty awful, the time when men were still men, Military–industrial complex, Eisenhower’s field rank, misplaced power, a golden age, the greying of the world, even the robot thinks he’s weird, how smokeable is two centuries old tobacco?, is the future the delusion?, was anti-hist a term at the time?, gorning!, transformed language, Russian River, incongruous authority figures, the highest ranking official in the world directorate doesn’t have anything better to do, delusions of grandeur, maybe history is just that important to them, Hampton Court Palace, who is the museum for?, what a weirdo, the business suit as a uniform, similar Philip K. Dick short stories, Upon The Dull Earth by Philip K. Dick, resurrection, The Commuter by Philip K. Dick, only the reader can see it, how are the worlds linked?, the version where Miller is crazy, Second Life, computer generate realities, World Of Warcraft grinding day and night, sorta-real gold, there’s no distinguishment between realities, Breakfast At Twilight by Philip K. Dick, time travel, the Cold War, idealized suburban lifestyle, a fleet of Russian robots (drones), fear of nuclear war 1950s – 1980s, Russian spy stories, fear of AIDS, AIDS education in Kindergarten!, blast radii, things are going to be great, Mark Turetsky has been narrating audiobooks since 2009, nerdy kids books, Pi In The Sky by Wendy Mass, a Recorded Books Book, Mark’s like a Kirby Heybourne type, the zombie books, Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, Cloud Atlas, Gone Girl, Ace Galaksi is a Canadian comedic audio drama miniseries.

Exhibit Piece by Philip K. Dick

Exhibit Piece illustrated by Paul Orban

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of The Mighty Carlins by Collin Doyle

SFFaudio Review

The Mighty CarlinsThe Mighty Carlins
By Collin Doyle; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 87 Minutes [AUDIO DRAMA]
Producer: The Wireless Theatre Company
Released: June 12, 2013
Themes: / Family / Humour / Black Comedy /

On the anniversary of his wife’s death, Leo Carlin and his two sons come together for their traditional night of sharing the good and not so good memories of the dearly departed Mrs Carlin. Beers are drunk. Plans are hatched. Secrets are revealed. The Mighty Carlins is a black comedy that celebrates a family at its worst.

Before I start talking about alcohol soaked childhoods, failed ambitions, stuck lives and dead-end plans, I want to clarify, The Mighty Carlins is an entertaining, compelling, audio drama replete with fun, twists and surprises.

On the anniversary of their mother’s death, two brothers, Mike and Davie get together with their father Leo, to share memories about their mother. It’s obvious from the conversation between Leo and Mike while they wait for Davie that this is not, nor has it ever been, a happy little family. The parents’ main objective through their lives together seemed to revolve around having enough liquor to make it through another night. Mike has a failed marriage and a couple of crashed business plans behind him and not much ahead. Self absorbed, inattentive Leo is more interested in humiliating his sons than engaging in anything meaningful. Most broken of all is the younger brother Davie, who despite a lifetime of proof against it, still believes he can find something worthwhile in these two. The three shards of broken glass that was once a family have this annual ritual for the benefit of Davie who’s desperate to find at least one happy memory he can hold onto against the bleak reality of his past and the looming future that holds no discernible difference. Gathered together to share memories about their mother, none of those remembrances enter the picture until the final quarter of the play. Until then the stories they tell are a mishmash of conspiracies, lies and betrayals with a few truths thrown in to mix it up a little.

To me, the play felt a lot like Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? where words are like scalpels and sentences are designed to inflict just enough damage to illicit pain, but not quite enough to stop the flow of conversation. Dialogue throughout glues the family combatants together while simultaneously shredding them apart.

Rather than follow a straightforward moving line, threads of story meander out of the narrative, swirl around, duck under, over, other threads, sometimes tying up loose ends, but more often leading to more questions instead of answers. Is this a mystery we’re listening to? Is there going to be a big reveal at the end? Is there anything holding this family together besides pain and lies? Each thread, each tangent tugs us through the labyrinth of these lives.

Despite wrecked childhoods, going nowhere lives and empty big plans for the future, The Mighty Carlins is not in any way depressing. It’s intriguing and captivating and at times laugh aloud funny. It features biting dialogue, well drawn, sympathetic (in the cases of the sons) characters who really shouldn’t be very likable at first glance, but ultimately are, failures et al.

Collin Doyle’s writing is strong and the whole piece is well crafted. It’s uniformly well performed, thoroughly enjoyable and engaging from start to finish.

From The Wireless Theatre Company website:

We believe that bringing a theatre company of this nature to the internet is a positive cultural contribution as the nature of audio plays is particularly suited to performance and publications of work by a large cross section of the community; we encourage and support any contributors, and will always strive to provide a forum for new talent. Our website is found purely through search engines and word of mouth – so if you like what you hear – PLEASE tell your friends!

I wholeheartedly agree. Check out The Wireless Theatre Company. Tell your friends.

cast:
Shane Rimmer
Christopher Ragland
Christian Malcolm

Music by Michael Seal

Directed by Paul Blinkhorn

Produced by Jack Bowman and Robert Valentine

Edited by Paul Darling

Engineered by Carlos Ziccarelli at Unity Studios, London.

Posted by Maissa Bessada

Review of Hammer Chillers Season 1: Sticks and Stone, The Devil in Darkness & Don’t Go There

SFFaudio Review

Hammer Chillers: Series One

Mr Jim Moon already introduced us to the legendary Hammer studios Chillers series. If you want to learn more about the background and the first three episode of Series 1 read his review here.

In order to avoid redundancy I will concentrate on the final three episodes, namely Sticks and Stones, The Devil in Darkness and Don’t Go There.

 

Episode 4 – Sticks and Stones

By Robin Ince; Performed by a full cast:

Released: ? June 2013

 

Neil Stanley is a nice man. He has a nice house, a nice wife, a nice life. But Neil has a secret. He’s an internet troll, spending every spare moment posting hate-filled messages online.

When he begins trolling talent-show contestant Sam Pinker, his threats begin to come true. Is Neil acting upon his online taunts? Or is something else to blame?

Oh man it does make me feel a bit like a troll myself starting off with a negative review. In short, I was a bit disappointed. Sticks and Stones failed to draw me in, and get me interested in the “what’s next?”

Is it because the connection that author Robin Ince attempt to draw similarities between medieval witch trials and modern day talent show contestants is not entirely convincing and rather forced? Or is it because he tries to pack too much into half hour or so of audio drama time? This drama could have done with a longer treatment to give it more room to build up the characters and the plot.

This is not meant to shake a stick at the production per se or the actors. In all fairness, it’s not like Sticks and Stones is really bad, it just left me with an unsatisfied feeling of “meh”.

 

Episode 4 – The Devil in Darkness

By Christopher Fowler; Performed by a full cast:

Released: July 5, 2013

Mia never takes the eerie old lift in the St Petersburg International Archive. But one night she leaves late and is forced to break her rule. She’s travelling down with the only other passenger when the lift jams between floors.

Andrei is a Russian electrician, and tries to free them, but he can’t get the doors open. As the days pass their bond grows stronger, while they grow weaker.

But what are those strange noises? Are supernatural forces trapping them in the lift? Or is the truth even more terrifying?

The fifth episode The Devil in Darkness starts of with a well-established scenario: the Locked Room, or, in this case the stuck elevator. It doesn’t help that it’s the weekend and the building is empty. Or is it? The old walls hold bad memories from the days when the basement housed the torture chambers of the Tscheka the Bolshevik secret police from the early days after the revolution.

Writer Christopher Fowler manages to avoid pretty much everything that was wrong with Sticks and Stones. The cast is reduced to two characters and the action boiled down to two people slipping into darkness and despair as the days run by. The acting is fine and the sound design is used to good effect. In the end the story surprises with a twist that at least had me thinking: Of course, but why didn’t I see this? I grant this to the believable and good performance of the actors Dylan Charles and Lauren Kellegher and the way the listener is subtly set up to think in the wrong direction.

 

Episode 6 – Don’t Go There

By Stephen Volk; Performed by a full cast:

Released: July 15, 2013

John and Laura Daulby’s son is lying in a coma in hospital, on a Greek holiday island. But John refuses to believe his son is just another victim of bad drugs.

He enters the hedonistic world of 18-30 clubbers to get to the truth, and meets the enigmatic and beautiful Stheno.

Finding himself increasingly attracted to her – in the same way his son was – he realises that she may just be a Greek myth come to life…

At 44 minutes this is the longest of the Hammer Chillers so far and this gives writer Stephen Volk ample time to develop the story. Volk whose love for the paranormal and horror genres has been widely demonstrated in his TV and film work (Gothic, Ghostwatch, Afterlife) visits ancient Greek myths.

The atmosphere of a small Greek island that is virtually deserted by day and a clubber’s paradise by night is transported quite effectively. Having said that though, at first I found the bigotry of John Daulby applied a little too thickly but it sets the stage nicely for the character’s gradual acceptance that there might be more to his son’s condition than just a bad trip. As with most of the other Hammer shows the motifs (soul-sucking femme-fatale seductress) is not new but well transported into the modern day. After listening you’re tempted to warn your kids to be careful whom they snog at techno parties in countries with a long mythological tradition.

This episode’s cast is great and benefits from Cyprus-born Daphne Alexander’s fluency in Greek. Few things ruin it for me as much as badly faked accents.

Overall, I would recommend the second half of Hammer’s first season of Chiller audio dramas. The episodes are short and self-contained so they are easily accessible and don not require you having to keep up-to-date with a massive multi-episode storyline ends with a cliffhanger every season. That also means that the occasional “miss” might stick out more but one in six isn’t a bad ratio so far.
All episodes can be downloaded individually or purchased for a modest subscription fee right from Hammer Chillers online. There is also digipack CD version for those who still like to have a hard copy.

Posted by Carsten Schmitt

Future Tense: Richard Matheson’s Born Of Man And Woman

SFFaudio Online Audio

Richard Matheson’s first published story, Born Of Man And Woman, is a powerful three page Science Fiction Horror tale written in the form of a diary. An uneducated and abused child, our protagonist, is kept chained in the basement by his or her parents, he or she has never been outdoors or upstairs. It’s a thoughtful tragic masterpiece.

Though I take the title as an allusion to a line in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth it also, I think, adds a layer of depth to the story’s sketch.

Born Of Man And Woman by Richard Matheson from Fantasy & Science Fiction, Summer 1950


Future TenseFuture Tense – Born Of Man And Woman
Adapted from the story by Richard Matheson; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 10 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcast: WMUK Special Projects
Broadcaster: May 30, 1974
Provider: SciFi Friday
First published in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Summer 1950.

External |PDF|

Posted by Jesse Willis

Wireless Theatre Company + Moonlight Audio Theatre: Burke And Hare

SFFaudio Online Audio

Up the close and doun the stair,
But and ben wi’ Burke and Hare.
Burke’s the butcher, Hare’s the thief,
Knox the boy that buys the beef.
—19th-century Edinburgh skipping rhyme

Burke And Hare

There may never have been a blacker comedy than this horrifying (and horrifyingly funny) audio drama about a pair of real life murderers. William Burke and William Hare apparently killed sixteen people in the early 19th century selling the corpses to an anatomist named Dr. Robert Knox.

This audio drama, which I found in the Moonlight Audio Theatre podcast feed, is well written, smartly acted, and full of ripe innuendo. Burke And Hare is clever and creepy. If you’ve seen the 1999 horror/comedy film Ravenous, also based on a true story, you know how disturbing this kind of mix can be.

Moonlight Audio TheatreBurke And Hare
By Terence Newman; Performed by a full cast
2 MP3 Files – Approx. 77 Minutes [AUDIO DRAMA]
Podcaster: Moonlight Audio Theatre
Podcast: June 2013
This is the story of the infamous 19th Century Scottish Grave-robbers who weren’t Scottish and didn’t rob graves. They were actually Irish and as robbing graves to supply the needs of Edinburgh’s anatomists proved to be rather hard work, they just took to murdering people – usually their neighbours – for profit. In collaboration with their common-law wives they set about supplying corpses for Dr John Knox an eminent Scottish surgeon with considerable enthusiasm and gusto. The play follows their business exploits from small beginnings, through their days of peak output to the final reckoning – set against a world that is becoming recognisably modern.

Part 1 |MP3|
Part 2 |MP3|

Podcast feed: http://moonlightaudio.libsyn.com/rss

Starring:
Rob Crouch
Jonathan Clarkson
Genevieve Swallow
Holly McLay
Clive Greenwood
Neil McCormack
Adam Hall

Edited by: Joe Siddons
Directed by: Robert Valentine
Music by: Adam Bernstein

Posted by Jesse Willis