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by R.J. Carter Published: November 29, 2002
Snow Glass Apples is the first of the pair of stories performed on this 2-disk set from Harper Audio. I say performed, rather than read, because this is not an audio book. Neither Snow Glass Apples nor Murder Mysteries is a simple, casual reading verbatim from Neil Gaiman's short story. Rather, they are both radio plays, both of which originally aired online by Seeing Ear Theatre via the SciFi Channel's website, scifi.com. And because they are radio plays, one needs to enter them with a different expectation. There is emoting, and over-emoting, and things done perhaps not the way you would expect them to be done, were this a stageplay or screenplay and you found yourself the director. But they are necessary things, and once your inner eye becomes accustomed to what your outer ear is telling it, you find it all comes together quite nicely. Bebe Neuwirth is the Queen and narrator of Snow Glass Apples, joined by other cast members in this creepy story that takes a well-known and well-loved fairy tale and turns it inside out so that its intestines and organs hang from it, dripping blood and other viscous fluids and leaving an indelible stain in the carpet of the listener's mind. Neuwirth's performance is sometimes moving, sometimes enchanting, and at all times masterful. Coming in at a little over 45 minutes, Snow Glass Apples makes the perfect bedtime story for grownups. Give yourself a little more time to listen to Disk 2, which is closer to 75 minutes. But it's time well-spent. Michael Emerson is the framework narrator of Murder Mysteries, but the real story is told by the angel Raguel, voiced by Brian Dennehy. There has been a murder in Heaven, the first of its kind, predating even Abel's demise at the hands of Cain. It is Raguel's purpose and function to discover who was responsible for the crime and take the vengeance of the Name on that person. While the other angels are busily laying out the blueprints for what will become the universe, Raguel takes statements from the murdered angel's boss, his co-worker, Host Captain Lucifer, and the head engineer, Zephkiel. In the course of his investigation, Raguel uncovers the culprit and thus sets into motion events that will reverberate through creation to the end of eternity. It's a celestial whodunnit that probably doesn't end the way you think it does, surrounded by a second whodunnit that almost--but not quite--gets lost in the telling. Dennehy does a great job of changing voices from his present, older, gruffer self to his younger, more angelic days. The radio play is almost a lost art, barely remembered through cassette tape collections of The Shadow or The Life of Reilly sold at Cracker Barrel's or interstate truck stops. Two Plays For Voices will, unfortunately, not resurrect the art. But it's a damned good start. |
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