The Angela Carter BBC Radio Drama Collection
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4.6 • 5 Ratings
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- £7.99
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- £7.99
Publisher Description
Angela Carter was one of the most important writers of the 20th Century. A pioneer of British magical realism, her work was described by Salman Rushdie as 'without rival and without equal'. Her radical, inventive novels influenced countless writers, while her dark, sensual short fiction turned traditional fables inside out, giving women the power over their desires and fates.
Susannah Clapp, Angela Carter's literary executor and friend, introduces the productions and offers fascinating insights into Angela Carter's life and work.
This landmark collection includes five new dramatisation of stories from her iconic collection of fairytales retold, The Bloody Chamber. Alongside the title story are 'The Erl-King', 'Wolf-Alice', 'The Tiger's Bride' and 'The Company of Wolves', with casts including Sophie Cookson, Ariyon Bakare, Lily Lesser, Hannah Genesius and Adjoa Andoh. A sixth tale from The Bloody Chamber, 'Puss in Boots', is adapted by Carter herself and stars Andrew Sachs as Puss.
Also included is an adaptation of Carter's award-winning Nights at the Circus, starring Roisin Conaty as Cockney trapeze artist Sophie Fevvers, and the world premiere of her unproduced screenplay The Christchurch Murder. Based on the real-life story of two New Zealand schoolgirls who killed for love, it was an inspiration for the Peter Jackson film Heavenly Creatures, and stars Fiona Shaw, Nancy Carroll and James Wilby.
Accompanying these are three thrilling radio plays: the Gothic Vampirella (starring Jessica Raine and Anton Lesser); the hallucinatory drama-documentary Come Unto These Yellow Sands (featuring James Anthony Rose as patricidal painter Richard Dadd); and an exploration of the life of Ronald Firbank, A Self-Made Man (with Lewis Fiander as Firbank).
Finally, Liza Ross reads the short story 'Lizzie's Tiger', originally commissioned for radio, in which the four-year-old Lizzie Borden has an extraordinary encounter at the circus.
A bonus documentary, Third Ear: Angela Carter, comprises Paul Bailey's lively interview with the author, recorded shortly before her death in 1992. In it, she discusses her novel Wise Children, and examines the impact of Britishness, politics, and the oral tradition on her subversive writing.
Contents
1 Introduction
2 The Bloody Chamber
3 The Erl-King
4 Wolf-Alice
5 The Tiger's Bride
6 The Company of Wolves
7 The Christchurch Murder
8-9 Nights at the Circus (in two parts)
10 Vampirella
11 Come Unto These Yellow Sands
12 Puss in Boots
13 A Self-Made Man
14 Lizzie's Tiger
15 Third Ear: An Interview with Angela Carter
Credits
Linking material by Susannah Clapp was produced by Caroline Raphael at Dora Productions.
The Bloody Chamber stories, The Christchurch Murder, Vampirella and Come Unto These Yellow Sands were produced by Fiona McAlpine at Allegra Productions.
All other programmes produced by the BBC.
© 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd
(p) 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd
Customer Reviews
A stunning collection of BBC radio dramas
The Angela Carter BBC Radio Drama Collection’ by Angela Carter contains 12 radio dramas, an introduction, and a concluding interview with Angela Carter. The dramas are individually cast.
This collection was beyond wonderful. Many of the dramas were recorded or re-recorded in 2018 as part of the BBC’s Get Carter Season. It opens with an introduction by Susannah Clapp, Angela Carter’s literary executor. Clapp also provided linking material for each drama.
The Introduction is followed by five short dramas adapted from ‘The Bloody Chamber’, then a dramatisation of Carter’s unproduced screenplay ‘Murder in Christchurch’, based on the 1954 New Zealand Parker-Holme murder case. Then there is a two-part full cast dramatisation of one of her most famous novels, ‘Nights at the Circus’.
While I was unfamiliar with the final five dramas each was interesting and unique in its own right. ‘Vampirella’ was a poetic story of Dracula’s daughter; ‘Come Unto These Yellow Sands’ is what Carter termed an ‘artificial biography’ of the Victorian fairy painter, Richard Dadd; ‘Puss in Boots’, another of the stories from ‘The Bloody Chamber’; ‘A Self Made Man’ a biographical drama about the English novelist Ronald Firbank, and finally ‘Lizzie's Tiger’, a short story about a young Lizzie Borden’s encounter with a circus tiger.
The collection concludes with a 1992 interview with Carter shortly before her death for BBC Radio 3’s Third Ear.
Again this was a superb collection and I loved it. It is an audiobook anthology that I certainly plan to revisit again and again for the beauty of Carter’s prose, her imaginative interpretations, and the sheer pleasure of listening to these exceptional radio dramas.
Highly recommended.