Showing results by publisher "Naxos AudioBooks" in Drama & Plays

These four works show Samuel Beckett at his most penetrating. Both Krapp's Last Tape (1958) and Not I (1972) are among the most striking pieces written for the theatre in the 20th century. An old man sits at a table, playing back old tapes made when he was younger, mixed glimpses of past feelings. In Not I, we have just a mouth expressing memories and torment in a torrent of words.

Many of Shakespeare's greatest and best-loved speeches are brought together in this superb collection, performed by outstanding artists who bring to vivid life words which are an integral part of our language, our culture and our everyday lives.

This widely studied play is one of the "best sellers" of the Shakespeare canon. This production is the sixth Shakespeare play in the series undertaken by Naxos AudioBooks in conjunction with Cambridge University Press.

In the hands of Sophocles, the master dramatist, the anguished tale of a man fated to kill his father and marry his mother retains its power to shock and move beyond any Freudian reference.

Hedda Gabler, the daughter of a deceased general, marries dull George Tesman and foresees a life of middle-class tedium stretching ahead when they return from their honeymoon. Increasingly she is drawn into the clutches of her admirer, Judge Brack, who seeks to establish a ménage à trois. Then the brilliant but dissolute Eilert Lovborg, a former flame, arrives to rival her husband for an academic post.

Shakespeare's Othello is one of his finest and most famous tragedies. This highly acclaimed performance, which ran between November 2007 and February 2008 at the Donmar Warehouse in London, features Chiwetel Ejiofor as the Moor Othello, Ewan McGregor as the scheming Iago, and Kelly Reilly as the gentle Desdemona. This recording features music written specifically for the stage production which enjoyed huge success - each performance was a sell-out.

Written in alternating prose and poetry, La Vita Nuova is a profound reflection on the nature of love, devoted to Dante's muse Beatrice. Following Beatrice's death in 1290, Dante became obsessed with the young Florentine woman, whom he only ever knew from a distance. He believed his love for her was a form of divine love and saw her as an image of salvation itself - a theme that is later explored in his masterpiece The Divine Comedy, where she guides him through heaven.

When novelist Charles Condomine invites a medium into his house in order to learn about the occult for his new book, the last thing he or his second wife dream is that the seance will bring back his first wife, Elvira, who wants Charles all to herself!

Under the Greenwood Tree is an affectionate and youthful portrait of a world Hardy knew well - village life in 'Wessex' - in which a romantic tale is set against changing circumstances. The traditional feature of local music making performed by the village band and choir is challenged by the modern innovation of organ and organist providing music in the church.

Under Milk Wood is Dylan Thomas's undisputed and unforgettable masterpiece - an affectionate, but hilarious portrait of a small Welsh town. The classic 1954 recording, featuring a perfect cast led by Richard Burton as "First Voice", is rightly considered to be definitive. This collection also includes two earlier radio programs: Return Journey to Swansea and Quite Early One Morning, read by Dylan Thomas and others.

Sheridan's most famous play, The School for Scandal, has been called 'the best existing English comedy of intrigue'. A favourite with audiences and critics alike since its premiere in 1777, this play is a classic English comedy of manners. Full of satirical wit, it subverts the Georgian social mores of its day with subtlety and charm. This historic recording features Edith Evans, Cecil Parker and Harry Andrews: Some of the finest actors of their generation.

This classic Shakespearean comedy is presented here in a colorful full-cast dramatization, drawn from the complete text and starring Warren Mitchell, Michael Maloney, and Sarah Woodward.

Twelfth Night, nowadays one of Shakespeare's best-loved and most-admired comedies, was not always so regarded: Samuel Pepys saw the play three times in the 1660s and judged it 'silly'. Modern audiences, critics, and directors seem better attuned to its delicate counter pointing of romance and realism....

Henry V, which dates from 1599, is the last in Shakespeare's series of plays based on English history. It is also, of course, among the Bard's best-known and most-performed works. It's given rich new life here by a full-cast presentation that combines classic literature with classical music.

When two children happen across an ancient shrine, they unintentionally summon an impish sprite named Puck, also known as Robin Goodfellow. To their wonderment, the fairy conjures up the past, taking them on ten magical adventures: They visit Roman Britain and the legion guarding Hadrian's Wall, the thirteenth-century court of King John, and Old England from the time of William the Conqueror.

William Henry Hudson was a founding member of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). Though born in Argentina, Hudson came to England in 1874, where he remained until his death in 1922. Absorbed by nature, and in particular by the lives and activities of birds, his acute observations on wildlife led to some charming books which helped establish the pastime of bird watching. Birds in Town and Village is one of his classics. It is a truly engaging rumination on birds, as he watched them go about their daily lives. It is unfailingly charming, and read with an easy, relaxed tone by Neville Jason.

Lady Audley is universally adored: Beautiful, kind and charming, she enamors all whom she meets. It is not until the strange disappearance of widower George Talboys that her behavior takes an odd turn. George's friend, Robert Audley, Lady Audley's nephew-in-law, is on the case; an upper-class layabout turned detective, he is determined to get to the bottom of things.

Three men, Kevin, Dermot and Joe, stand and tell their stories on a bare stage. They never meet. Or do they? From this simplest of dramatic devices emerges a rounded tale of Irish life across the generations, accurate and poignant and therefore unforgettable: The poetry of ordinary life.

By the time Shakespeare came to write Macbeth - almost certainly in 1605/1606 - he had already completed three of the great tragedies with which modern audiences are so familiar: Hamlet (1601), Othello (1603), and King Lear (1605). Each of those plays gives us an eponymous hero who is in some significant way flawed, but for whom we also inevitably feel deep sympathy, whatever his errors or crimes. But in MacBeth, Shakespeare has chosen for his tragic hero a man guilty of the most terrible crime imaginable to a Jacobean audience, that of regicide - the murder of a king.

In this remarkable anthology of historical recordings are many of the great artists of the past. Early cylinder recordings of Sir Henry Irving preserve the voice and character of the greatest actor of the Victorian period as well as Ellen Terry, his stage partner for many years. In this program, the changing styles of Shakespeare performance, a fascinating study, are documented with such varied actors as Tree, Gielgud, Thorndike, Olivier, Booth, and Barrymore.