... 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 ...

... Passion arrives through brevity Size is not everything. Two radio dramas, both broadly on the theme of courtship, showed how reams of air time can be an obstacle to cogent thought but much can be achieved through previty John Purser's Scottish frolic, The Secret Commonwealth (R3. Sunday, May 5), staggered through the heather for nearly two hours, but achieved little beyond a mesmeric sense of ...

... Scabrous, cruel wit Joe Orton would have been 64 this year had he lived. Two radio productions marked the 30th anniversary of his death. A powerful rendition of Loot (Catherine Bailey Us for R3, Sunday, September 14) emphasised its claim to be probably his best play with its scabrous, cruel wit. This black comedy, with its themes of skewed Roman Catholic values, corrupt authoritar ianism, ...

... Uncovering Charlotte's ebb By MOIRA PETTY They sought her here, they sought her there. Playwright Michelene Wandor and actress Fiona Shaw pursued the phantasmic vestiges of Bloomsbury poet Charlotte Mew in The Shade Catcher (R4, Thursday, June 24). Wandor's narrative was read by Anna Massey with Shaw reading Mew's poetry in a casual fireside rendition, murmuring at one point: I like that ...

... Double delight should play again BY MOIRA PETTY Two of the finest plays to have been broadcast by BBC Radio this year, went out this month. Sadly, neither will have been heard by many listeners in the British Isles. Peter Tinniswood's The Moonhunter (Saturday, November 23) and Carey Harrison's A Walk In the Boto De Bologne (Saturday, November 30) were commis sioned and produced by the World ...

... Those lost opportunities By MOIRA PETTY Often, the old or the dying--or the old and dying--amble back through their lives hand-in-hand with a passing playwright. It is a useful plot device with no worries about the ending. Then comes the moment when the respectable resident of Acacia Avenue confesses to some wild love affair or the body under the patio, as though the confessional can not be ...

... Grey drama livens up wasted slot By MOIRA PETTY It is remarkable how the same radio drama slot can showcase twaddle one week, yet delight the next. Thus, Wasteland (BBC Pebble Mill for R4, Thursday, November 13) was realistic enough in its portrayal of inarticulate people voicing inarticulate emotions--but to what purpose? Nigel Moffat's play about feckless Jamaican, Fox (Eddie Nestor) and the ...

... There's nothing better than a Tinniswood treat Peter Tinniswood has become the master of love in trie afternoon, of passion for the non- pulchritudinous, of shrieks and gasps at once comical and mournful. The women in a Tinniswood play are like a Beryl Cook painting come to life; the men are Lowiy matchsticks. So it was a treat to find two new Tinniswoods in as many days. Next Time We Might ...

... Welles' chilling War over the airwaves BY MORIA PETTY Sometimes the sheer amount of drama broadcast on radio leaves me struggling with a backlog of listening. Rarely, though, have I been 58 years out of date. It was a welcome piece of scheduling that allowed me to listen, for the first time in full, to Orson Welles stirringly theatrical adaptation of HG Wells' War of the Worlds (Heritage ...

... Shock reaction to Barker's violent and beautiful tale BY MOIRA PETTY Howard Barter's raucously invigorating play. Victory (R3, Sunday, October 1) came with a ready made controversy and a subtitle that neatly summed it all up- Choices in Reaction. His Hogarthian tale of the progress, not of a rake, but of the widow of a revolutionary in the post Restoration days of the 1660s. detiberatery ...

... Jealous tale that rings a bell BY MOIRA PETTY The novelist Iris Murdoch is in many ways the quintessential author of radio prose. Her books embrace cerebral themes within a strong narrative and her characters are quirky: not a bad recipe for radio drama. The magical The Sea, the Sea was a radio play a tew years ago; now, in ihe Classic Serial slot, comes a grip ping and highly entertaining ...

... Hell-tale update BY MOIRA PETTY When TV has themed nights, it is all low-brow culture viewed with the regulatory post-modem irony. How liberating for those working in radio drama that they can, without blushing, take their cue from culture with a capital C. And how dangerous An updated version of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is an undertaking, especially as 2000 Tales (R4, from Monday, ...