Some Recordings and Radio Stuff

Excited screams. Naxos Audiobooks have got their catalogue back up and running, with the RealPlayer promos, so you will need to check your software and plug-ins first. Shop @ssistant will, however, still drive you crackers. Plus ca change (what is the tag for a cedilla, anyway?)

So now you can go back to what you were doing before ...

Dickens

The Pickwick Papers

Hard Times

Great Expectations *get yer RealPlayer promo

A Tale of Two Cities (abridged)

David Copperfield

A Christmas Carol - forthcoming October 1999 (thank you, the omniscient Nicolas Soames of Naxos Audiobooks!)

Little Dorritt (Penguin Audiobooks)

 

and - drumroll, please -

Bleak House - a BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation, published by BBC Worldwide Ltd. 1999.

 

"Bleak House is one of the jewels in the crown of radio drama...John Dryden has coaxed uniformly high standard performances from the talented cast which includes Anton Lesser, Daisy Beaumont, Micheal Atwell and Robert Portal" - Christopher Robson, in: Plays and Players, Feb 1999: 20) Anton "I don't do voices" Lesser plays Tulkinghorn, the Dedlocks' cunning lawyer who discovers Lady Dedlock's secret and threatens to expose her. Nuk nuk nuk.

Other Recordings

Shakespeare

• Hamlet (Hamlet): Richard Nathan posted to the humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare (one of the Deja forums) on this recording: "I've only listened to the Naxos HAMLET once, and that was a few months ago. I found it quite interesting in that it was the most unsympathetic portrayal of the title character that I have ever encounterd. He's nasty, petulant, self-centered, whiney, self-pitying, rude, and generally obnoxious." Which seems to be rather as Lesser played him on stage in 1982.

• Romeo and Juliet (Mercutio)
  

• King Lear - Kent (Arkangel Shakespeare)

• Henry VIII - Norfolk (Arkangel Shakespeare)

• Othello - Iago (Naxos)

Other Wee Rippers

• Paradise Lost *get yer RealPlayer promo

• Intimacy: Sina says (helpfully) "This audiobook is a real must. And besides, it works miracles on Dickens-hangovers ... "

• Popular Poetry, Popular Verse, vol 1

• The Iliad

• The Odyssey: Tiny little-known fact: Nicolas Soames from Naxos tells me Lesser "directed Benjamin Soames...the only occasion he has directed for audiobook" - Benedict Flynn's The Adventures of Odysseus for the kiddies; it's on the Naxos catalogue as well.

• The Pied Piper of Hamelin and other poems *get yer RealPlayer promo. Hint: should Anton Lesser ever ask you to jump out of a burning building - don't do it

• The Happy Prince and Other Tales *get yer RealPlayer promo (and your box of tissues)

• The Canterbury Tales

• The Middle Way

• The Old Testament

• The Riddle of the Sands (Cover to Cover) - gung-ho, kids
• Clockwork (Cover to Cover)
• Archangel (Random House)

 

 *In response to 'Confused in Edinburgh', the answer is no, not all of it. But thank you for asking.

Radio Stuff

This section is (semi-)organised by broadcast date, as this is probably the best I can do ... and it's a work in progress, so bear with me ... and thank you to Cora for her wonderfully detailed list of Lesser's early recorded stuff!

Production	Character Played	Broadcast date (approximate) and station
Dybbuk	Channon	R4 30.3.79
Tom Jones	Tom Jones	R4 - 6 parts
Thyestes	Messenger	R3 5.6.83
Before I am old	Neil	R4 23.8.83
My aim is true	Robert	R4 8.11.84
Sir John Oldcastle	Henry V	R3 14.4.85
Radio Waves	Paul	R4 13.5.85
Hippolytus	Hippolytus	R3 11.8.85
Tragedy of Wallenstein	Max Piccolomini	R3 20.10.85
Iphigenia in Tauris	Orestes	R3 29.4.86
Barnes People III	Young Man	R3 28.6.86
Loves's Sacrifice	Fernando	R3 30.12.86
The Robe	Marcellus	R4 6 eps 12.4-17.5.87
Hang Up		R3 19.11.87
That wretched Smithson girl	Young Berlioz	R3 6.3.88
Raffles ep 4:A Bad Night	Medlicott	R4/WS 22.6.88
Truckin' Maggie!	Nigel	BBC, 1989
By Where the Old Shed Used to Be	William	? 1990
The White Devil	?	BBC World Service, 1 and 2 March, 1997
Fatherland	Xavier March	Radio 4, last aired Dec 1998,
The Comedy of Errors	?	BBC Radio 3, 21 Febuary 1999
A Recollection	[Reader]	Radio 4, 7 October 1999
The Clock of Heaven	Rev Dr Nevil Maskelyne
Speak, Memory	[Reader]	Radio 4, January 2000
The Bear Hunt	[Reader]	Radio 4, 4 January 2000
The Sea	Hatch	30 January 2000
Between the Ears		Radio 3, 20 February 2000
Gurney	Ivor Gurney	Radio 4, 8 February 2000
Easy Virtue (Noel Coward)	Charles Burleigh	Radio 3, 23 July 2000
Crime and Punishment		August 2000
The Wilt Alternative	[Reader]	Radio 2, November 2000
Stalingrad Kiss	Vassily Grossman	Radio 3, 9 March 2003