Monday, October 2, 2006

Online Audio

Our UK correspondent, Roy, sez that RTÉ Radio 1 (Ireland Public Radio) is airing a new series throughout October. Ireland’s award winning Crazy Dog Audio Theatre has created “Audio Gothic” a series of five radio plays. Each of the plays is written, directed and produced by Roger Gregg, recently hailed on BBC Radio 4 as ‘one of a handful of truly great radio dramatists.’

Varying in styles from dark comedy to sombre character studies, each play focuses on individuals who struggle with loneliness, loss and self-delusion. Each production features all of the hallmarks of Crazy Dog Audio Theatre; original music scores, location recordings, state-of-the-art sound design and some of the very best Irish and international voice talents.

Roy writes: “Given Crazy Dog’s track record this should be well worth investigating at least. However, I’m not sure that the Tuesday Play slot is necessarily archived for later listening or mp3 download even though from the ‘past shows’ link previous Crazy Dog productions such as Diabolic Playhouse still appear to be available from 2004.”

Crazy Dog has posted the entire 5 episode description on their website.

Tuesday 3 October:

SEANY BOY
Unable to deal with his grief, Seany Boy, an elderly Cork farmer, has retreated into his fantasy of being a gun toting, singing cowboy of the Old West. Seany is dismissed as a colourful eccentric until he draws a gun to intervene in a racist attack on an asylum seeker and the consequences rapidly spiral out of control. Liam Heffernan stars in this modern tale of the West.

Tuesday 10 October:

BRAD’S BOOK OF LIES
Following a nervous breakdown, the world’s greatest marketing guru awakens to the fact that the only truth he’s ever known is how to best tell lies. He resolves to become a new person but soon discovers that the world around him will not let his old self die. Simon O’Gorman stars in this dark comedy.

Tuesday 17 October:

MARY MAGUIRE SURROUNDED BY LOVED ONES
A moving portrait of a lonely Dublin woman spending a day reunited with her long-lost nearest and dearest. Karen Ardiff stars as Mary Maguire in this tale of loss and love.

Tuesday 24 October:

MARSYAS: THE HIPPEST SATYR
A modern jazz retelling of the Greek myth of Marsyas, a humble satyr who comes under the spell of a cursed magical horn. Leading Irish guitarist Giordai Ua Laoghaire is the featured musician in this comic musical fable of pride and self-delusion.

Tuesday 31st October:

MARINETTE 1.1.
A special Halloween tale of voodoo and vengence. A maladjusted computer expert comes to believe he’s being guided by a vengeful voodoo spirit named Marinette. Phil Proctor of RUGRATS stars in this voodoo tale for Halloween.

Thanks for the heads-up Roy!

posted by Jesse Willis

Science Fiction Audiobook Review

Strawberry Automatic
By T. Ray Gordon, Full Cast Production by Richard Sellers
1 CD – 78 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Apex Audio Theatre
Published: 2005
Themes: / Science Fiction / Androids / Terraforming Mars /

The Automatics are androids, and trained fighting machines. When they fought for their own rights, they were, of course, declared non-personal non grata and the ones that could left Earth for other parts of the Solar System colonies. Strawberry Automatic is tall with flaming red hair, beautiful and deadly as they come. On Mars there is a company running the terraforming operation. Naturally someone wants to speed up the process using illegal nukes, and someone else wants to stop them.

I say “of course” and “naturally” because as I listened to this CD I had no trouble keeping slightly ahead of the story line. I kept thinking “This is a 1950s sci-fi story.” On his CD sales website, producer and narrator Richard Sellers says that T. Ray Gordon wrote 72 original manuscripts during the 1950s, which have never been published until now. So I was right. And as seems to be the cliché with pulp and radio writers, he was alcoholic and killed himself in 1961.

As a story Strawberry Automatic is a fairly good sci-fi adventure. As a script it relies too much on narration, some of which could have been written into dialogue or eliminated to keep the story moving faster. This might have made the script longer, though, and it appears they had decided to keep it to one CD. The production values are high, as the producer works as a voiceover artist and knows his trade. He also narrates the story. The acting is quite good, and it shows that Sellers knows his community of good performers. They just need someone to help them develop the script a bit before moving on.

The production values and the fact that it was not a story that had ever been produced before garnered it an Honorable Mention for the 10th Annual Mark Time Awards for Science Fiction Audio this year. Click here for more info.

The first of Gordon’s stories made for audio by Apex Audio Theatre, Inhumanity Quest, was also produced by Richard Sellers, and it shares many of the qualities mentioned here regarding the story, the production quality, and the performances.

I liked the production a little better the second time I heard it, as I could listen a bit more critically. It is well done. But I don’t know if I could listen to 72 of this kind of tale.

Reviewed by Jerry Stearns, Great Northern Audio Theatre