... Social division merits derision By MOIRA PETTY Larita Whittaker is a heroine after my own heart. The catalyst of Noel Coward's Easy Virtue (Catherine Bailey Ltd for R3, Sunday, December 26) preferred to read Marcel Proust than practise her tennis, proclaiming: I don't think the ends will justify the means. I wish I had wriggled out of school sports lessons with such elegance. Coward was ...

... Foetal attraction had me rapt BY MOIRA PETTY Describing this radio production of Sylvia Plath's poem Three Women (BBC Manchester for R3. Saturday, January 8) as a drama raised the wrong kinds of expectations. I was relieved that it had not become an anachronistic hymn to the epidural but tained the spiritual intensity of Plath's poem to childbearing, each woman telling her story in lyrical ...

... Elegant shifts of perspective By Moira Petty One of the most difficult effects to achieve in radio drama, I have decided, after hearing Gordon House's ravishing production of Amy's View (R3, Sunday, January 23), must be that of time moving on. Without the visual nudges - greying hair, changing fashions, what is there to indicate temporal movement? David Hare's four-act play was set between ...

... Reflective rock solid drama By Moira Petty Anything which jolts the critics out of their preconceptions is good. The Bellringer and the Bi-Valve (BBC Birmingham for R4, Thursday, January 20) caused me to abandon knee-jerk classifications and analyses. The first of three plays, jointly entitled The Trinity, about the past, present and future, Sarah Woods' entwining of drama and documentary ...

... American epic is full of beauty BY MOIRA PETTY The towering themes of East of Eden (R4, from Sunday, February 27) made for one of the most satisfying Classic Serial adaptions. Elia Kazan's film starring James Dean is a classic but this radio dramatisation by Shaun McKenna, unfettered by Dean's distracting sultriness, got to the heart of John Steinbeck's great novel of sibling rivalry. This ...

... Concentrated emotion By Moira Petty When Jane Davis, mother of l9-year-old Shannon, one of the victims of the Pan Am flight which exploded over Lockerbie on December 21, 1989, visited the site, she saw passport photos of the 270 dead and realised the extent of the pain. But the strength of producer Dave Batchelor's Postcards from Shannon (BBC Scotland for R4, Friday, March 10) was in ...

... Bourgeois angst simmers away By MOIRA PETTY Kingsley Amis was fond of opining that a writer needed to shut himself off from family life if he was to get on. Virginia Woolf concluded that the female writer needed a room of her own. Her Mrs Dalloway was irked by the domestic experience even while she embraced it. But, as highlighted in Eileen Atkins' sensitive dramatisation of To the ...

... No barriers to vintage drama BY MOIRA PETTY What is great about radio dramatisations of period pieces is that costumes and sets do not get in the way. You cannot go into a trance over an interesting curtain treatment--you have to concentrate on the voices and soon find yourself swept up in the subtext. Not that much of the motivation in Honore Balzac's Cousin Bette, the Poor Relation ...

... Treads a likeable path BY MOIRA PETTY I had not thought of Rosalind as a control freak before this new As You Like It (R3, Sunday, April 23). It may have appeared so only to my ears, for the direction by Kate Rowland was light and unforced, allowing the magic of this forest of Arden setting to creep over the characters, much assisted by Harvey Brough's music. In a way Helena Bonham Carter ...

... Artful dissection of friendship By Moira Petty Power struggles are always riveting. Shakespeare's Richard II talked of buckets in a well spilling from one to the other. The friends in Yasmina Reza's Art (Mentorn Radio for R3, Sunday, May 7) experience similar shifts in their relationship as a vigorous ment or, more likely, a crotcnety put down, placed one ahead of the others. A huge success ...

... Anti-feminist message? BY MOIRA PETTY Lawyers Chartie and Stephanie took the adversarial tradition to enjoyable new depths in the courtroom drama The System of Justice (R4, Friday, May 19). Stephanie's client Ray was a bigtime villain, but she scared the life out of me when she unleashed her vitriolic tongue on him. Then she turned her atten tion to her former flame Charlie, who had made a ...

... A story to haunt you BY MOIRA PETTY From the heart of her own horror, a 12-year-old victim of the Sierra Leone war spoke with stoicism, humour and imagination. Child of the Border -- Africa, Sia Mia's Story, was the first in a series, CMM of Our Time (R4, from Monday, June 5) about children from different cultures. The project is the brainchild of leading dramatist Lee Hall and head of BBC ...