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Thornton Wilder: Our Town, The Bridge of San Luis Rey & More
- A BBC Radio Full-Cast Drama Collection
- Narrated by: Full Cast, Robert Glenister, Annette Badland, Tom Goodman-Hill, Barbara Barnes, Helen McCrory, Robert Hardy, Sean Barrett, Elizabeth Proud
- Length: 4 hrs and 32 mins
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Publisher's summary
Four of Thornton Wilder's most acclaimed works, adapted for BBC Radio - plus bonus material exploring his life and career
Thornton Wilder is one of America's most important literary figures. He won the Pulitzer Prize three times - for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and the plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth - and is the only person to be awarded the Pulitzer for both fiction and drama. Included here are four of his key works, set in different times and places, but sharing the same fundamental motifs - the universality of human experience and our search for life's meaning.
Our Town, his timeless tale of love, marriage, birth and death in a small American community, stars Ed Bishop, William Roberts and Liza Ross. It is preceded by a 10-minute introductory extract from Free Thinking, in which presenter Anne McElvoy and actor/director David Cromer discuss the play's themes and techniques.
Wilder's masterpiece, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, tells the story of the five victims of a bridge collapse, and the eyewitness who sets out to understand why they were fated to die. A poignant philosophical fable, it features a stellar cast including Annette Badland, Robert Glenister, Tom Goodman-Hill and Helen McCrory.
Adapted from the play by Jerome Kilty, The Ides of March is based on Wilder's epistolary novel centred around the last days of the Roman republic, and stars Robert Hardy as Julius Caesar. Next, Ed Bishop reads from Heaven's My Destination, the comic tale of an amateur philosopher who leaves a trail of chaos wherever he goes.
Finally, in a fascinating episode of Front Row, Mark Lawson, theatre director David Lan and New York Times theatre critic Mel Gussow discuss how Wilder became a literary icon, and launched a quiet revolution in American theatre.
Cast and credits
Written by Thornton Wilder
Copyright © by The Wilder Family LLC 1927 (The Bridge of San Luis Rey), 1935 (Heaven's My Destination), 1938 (Our Town), 1948 (The Ides of March)
Free Thinking
Presented by Anne McElvoy
With David Cromer
Produced by Zahid Warley
First broadcast BBC Radio 3, 16 October 2014
Our Town
Stage Manager - Ed Bishop
Dr Gibbs - William Roberts
Mrs Gibbs - Liza Ross
George Gibbs - Ben Fairman
Rebecca Gibbs - Teresa Gallagher
Mr Webb - Garrick Hagon
Mrs Webb/Dead Woman - Shelley Thompson
Emily Webb - Barbara Barnes
Joe Crowell/Si Crowell - Tom Bevan
With Vincent Marzello, Peter Whitman, John Evitts and Frances Jeater
Directed by David Hitchinson
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 1 July 1995
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Madre Maria del Pilar - Annette Badland
Uncle Pio - Michael Feast
Jaime/Boy - Frederick Forge
Brother Juniper/Captain Alvarado - Robert Glenister
Esteban/Manuel - Tom Goodman-Hill
Pepita/Dona Clara - Jasmine Hyde
Camila, la Perichole - Helen McCrory
Marquesa de Montemayor - Sian Phillips
Dramatised by Judith Adams
Directed by Gaynor MacFarlane
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 12 May 2002
The Ides of March
Narrator - Patrick Tull
Caesar - Robert Hardy
Brutus - Sean Barrett
Clodia - Margaret Robertson
Cleopatra - Elizabeth Proud
Pompeia, Caesar's wife - Patricia Gallimore
Julia, Caesar's aunt - Betty Hardy
Clodius - Nigel Lambert
Catullus - David Spenser
Adapted for radio by Nesta Pain from the play by Jerome Kilty
Produced by Nesta Pain
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 17 August 1970
Heaven's My Destination
Read by Ed Bishop
First broadcast BBC Radio 3, 17 April 1997
Front Row
Presented by Mark Lawson
With David Lan and Mel Gussow
Produced by Nicki Paxman
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 4 March 2004
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The last of Thornton Wilder’s works published during his lifetime, Theophilus North is part autobiographical and part the imagined adventures of Wilder’s twin brother who died at birth. Setting out to see the world in the summer of 1926, Theophilus North gets as far as Newport, Rhode Island, before his car breaks down. To support himself, Theophilus takes jobs in the elegant mansions along Ocean Drive, just as Wilder himself did in the same decade.
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I loved this novel
- By Page on 12-19-22
By: Thornton Wilder
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The Bridge of San Luis Rey
- By: Thornton Wilder
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 3 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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In eighteenth-century Peru, a rope bridge collapses, dropping five people to tragic deaths in the gorge below. In the aftermath, Brother Juniper, a Franciscan friar and a witness to the disaster, strives to comprehend why these five people were fated to die in this way. Was it, he wonders, some form of divine Providence, or was it arbitrary and unrelated to the manner in which these people had led their lives?
By: Thornton Wilder
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Trapped
- Ten Full-Cast BBC Radio Dark Comedies
- By: Mark Maier, Daniel Maier
- Narrated by: Olivia Colman, Mark Maier, Chris Pavlo, and others
- Length: 4 hrs and 42 mins
- Original Recording
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In these ten witty, dark and disturbing episodes some of Britain’s best comedians come together to perform simultaneously hilarious and unsettling stories that will have you gripped. Sticky situations on ski slopes, placating an unruly ghost, a boy stuck at the bottom of well and an unusual adventure weekend with romantic overtones - are just some of the scenarios from comedy writers Mark Maier and Daniel Maier (a long term collaborator of Charlie Brooker and Harry Hill).
By: Mark Maier, and others
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David Edgar: A BBC Radio Drama Collection
- 17 Full-Cast Productions Including The Shape of the Table, Pentecost & Maydays
- By: David Edgar
- Narrated by: Andy Serkis, Charles Dance, Damian Lewis, and others
- Length: 25 hrs and 45 mins
- Original Recording
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David Edgar is among the UK’s leading contemporary dramatists, well known for his powerful plays chronicling Britain's changing political landscape over the past 50 years. More than 60 of his original plays, adaptations and translations have been performed around the world, and in 2023 he was honoured with a Writers’ Guild Outstanding Contribution award for his service to British playwriting. This radio anthology contains some of his most notable work.
By: David Edgar
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The Bridge of San Luis Rey
- By: Thornton Wilder
- Narrated by: Sam Waterston
- Length: 3 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Wilder's stories consistently explored the connections between the commonplace and cosmic dimensions of human experience, always returning to fundamental questions about the meaning of life. This Pulitzer Prize-winning tale concerns the lives of five people who fall to their deaths from a Peruvian rope bridge in 1714. A humble Franciscan, Brother Juniper, witnesses the accident and determines to learn about the lives of the victims in order to find out whether this accident happened by chance or by plan.
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Excellent Story, But Poor Audiobook Technically
- By RKL on 11-15-13
By: Thornton Wilder
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Goethe: A BBC Radio Drama Collection
- Six Full-Cast Dramatisations Including Faust, The Sorrows of Young Werther and More
- By: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Narrated by: Simon Callow, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Jack Farthing, and others
- Length: 17 hrs and 5 mins
- Original Recording
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Johann Wolfgang Goethe was a colossus of German literature and a true Renaissance man. A novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher, he wrote the first international bestseller, The Sorrows of Young Werther, and his epic masterpiece Faust is one of the most famous and celebrated dramas of all time.
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Death of a Salesman
- By: Arthur Miller
- Narrated by: Stacy Keach, Jane Kaczmarek, Steven Culp, and others
- Length: 2 hrs and 16 mins
- Original Recording
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Stacy Keach and Jane Kaczmarek star in this 1949 masterpiece by Arthur Miller, a searing portrait of the physical, emotional, and psychological costs of the American dream. Willy Loman (Keach) is the play's iconic traveling salesman, whose family is torn apart by his desperate obsession with greatness and social acceptance. As his two sons cast about aimlessly for their station in life, Willy begins to come unraveled when the reality of his life threatens his long-cherished illusions.
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Great Performance
- By Michael Bross on 08-01-23
By: Arthur Miller
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Macbeth
- By: William Shakespeare
- Narrated by: James Marsters, Joanne Whalley, Josh Cooke, and others
- Length: 1 hr and 59 mins
- Original Recording
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Infamously known as the cursed Scottish play, Macbeth is perhaps Shakespeare’s darkest tragedy. When General Macbeth is foretold by three witches that he will one day be King of Scotland, Lady Macbeth convinces him to get rid of anyone who could stand in his way – including committing regicide. As Macbeth ascends to the throne through bloody murder, he becomes a tyrant consumed by fear and paranoia.
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Might want to Read Along
- By Syd Young on 02-03-14
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Mark Twain: A BBC Radio Drama Collection
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Million Pound Bank Note & More
- By: Mark Twain
- Narrated by: full cast, Jason Isaacs, Kelsey Grammer, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 58 mins
- Original Recording
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Mark Twain (real name Samuel Langhorne Clemens), was one of the foremost writers and humourists to come out of the United States. Hailed by William Faulkner as 'the father of American literature', he is renowned worldwide for his classic novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This wide-ranging collection comprises dramatisations and readings of a host of his much-loved stories, from well-known works to less familiar gems.
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Delightful
- By Amanda on 06-28-22
By: Mark Twain
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Joseph Conrad: The Secret Agent, Heart of Darkness & More
- A BBC Radio 4 Drama Collection
- By: Joseph Conrad
- Narrated by: Kris Marshall, Stephen Tompkinson, Ron Cook, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
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Polish-born author and mariner Joseph Conrad is widely regarded as one of the greatest English novelists. His 16 years in the merchant navy profoundly shaped his fiction, giving him transformative experiences of adventure and exotic places, and a unique insight into the human psyche. Included here are adaptations of six of his best works, brought together for the first time and collected in chronological order, plus one fascinating bonus programmes exploring his life and art.
By: Joseph Conrad