... Bewitched, bothered and bewildered by MOIRA PETTY The TRUEST notes of the Operama season have been found in those plays where writers have used the opera's source material as a starting point for their own flights of fantasy. Such was Christopher Fitz-Simon's delight ful comedy of deathbed manners, Johnny Sheehy (R4, Thursday, December 8), whose provenance was Puccini's one act Gianni Schicci. ...

... Christmas is better on the air Iiv MOIItA PETTY OK, SO I'm biased, but I think radio does Christmas so much better than television. The 12 days of Christmas seem more like the 1200 while festive television, with all those Christmas specials filmed in the summer, washes over you. And attaching the tag 1 V pre miere' to a film doesn't make it any better than the first time you saw it at the ...

... Adaptations we want to know and hear By MORIRA PETTY Time Men In a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) (BBC Wortd Service for R4, Thursday, December 29) set moments of near pastoral idyll side by side with hysterically prosaic domestic considerations. Tom Stoppard's faultless adaptation provided. scene after scene to savour, retaining a the gentle absurdity of Jerome K Jerome's original. The ...

... Meldrew's the new Victor of the airwaves BY MORIA PETTY Victor MeMrew, the peerless old codger from One Foot in the Grave (R2. from Saturday, January 21), who is forever fulminating on life's minor injustices, has made the transition from television to radio. The traffic usually goes m the opposite direction so it was inter esting to see how David Renwicks radio adaptation, fea turing the ...

... It's a thin line between lust, love and hate BY MOIRA PETTY I've nursed a passionate indifference to Georgette Heyer since early teens when certain factions were rustling the pages of her Regency romances under their desk lids. You could have lobbed almost anything else my way, from Thomas Hardy to The Story of 0, but never these drippy dramas of costumed courtship. R4 listeners of a ...

... Cartland romance with a Tarantino touch BY MOIRA PETTY Wally K Daly is best known for his comedy scripts but I think he removed his tongue from his cheek before he sat down to adapt Barbara Cartland's Enchanting EvH (BBC Pebble Mill for R4, Monday, February 13) for He clearly thought it best to go with the flow, a breathy yet pedestrian narrative involving a hero, (Timothy Bentinck) who ...

... Ann Hampton Callaway Pizza on the Park Welcome to my world, says singer/pianist Ann Hampton Callaway and who could say no? This is probably the best female cabaret artist I have ever seen at Pizza on the Park and one who holds the audience in the palm of her hand. Jokingly dismissing any claim she's any to relative to Cab (of Minnie the Moocher fame), Callaway is a performer who is unlikely ...

... West Coast twangs produce the unlikeliest Romans of all By Moira Petty But soft, who goes there? With their American West Coast twangs and Thunderbird puppet inflections, it could only have been Hollywood's finest at play in Julius Caesar (BBC co-production with LA Theatre Works for R3, Sunday, February 26). The cast list was a roll call of voices you had heard on numerous TV movies oddly ...

... Sartre's Hell could be the Northern Line BY MOIRA PETTY Listening to Michael Earley's impeccable production of No Way Out (R3. Sunday, March 12) brought back a recent news story. In the play, here living up to its reputation as Jean-Paul Sartre's finest drama, Garcin, one of the trio embalmed in a living hell cinctly describes their dilemma: Hell is other people. Transport Minister ...

... Now it's laidback Robert! A bizarre early life in hippy communes, sleeping among free spirits on beaches, Tias fashioned a broad outlook for Robert Carlyle, star of the series Hamish Macbeth BY LISA VANOLI Probably best known for his portrayal of Albie, the psychopathic Liverpool fan in the latest series of Cracker, Robert Carlyle has had a dramatic change of character for his new series ...

... Losing the way with characters a few tabs short of a full trip BY MOIRA PETTY At times it sounded as if Timothy Leary had had a hand in the writing of Phyllis Nagy's play The Strip (BBC Radio North for R4, Monday, March 27). But most of the characters were a few tabs short of a full trip, especially the Ku Klux Klan terrorist Lester (Christopher Fairbanks) who had hardly evolved from the ...

... Dramatic pictures that touch the heart to its very depth BY MOIRA PETTY Radio is the most intimate of mediums but it is only rarely that a broadcast play can touch the heart to its very depths while gripping the intellect. Such a drama is Martin Lynch 's Pictures of Tomorrow (BBC Northern Ireland for R3. Sunday, April 9) which, under the direction of Michael Quinn, has made a triumphant ...