Bond, James Bond

Next Monday Alex will start reading "Casino Royal" on BBC Radio 7 in five daily episodes.

Check: BBC Radio 7 for details.

Drama Queens Pictures

The Joseph Fiennes web has some pictures of the actors on stage with their characters at the Old Vic:

Joseph Fiennes Web

Swearing and Grumbling?

Just a couple of details of Alex's performance at:
Artinfo

Solid Granite

Louise Jury at the Evening Standard has reviewed Alex's performance as solid granite block:

"Bravo to the Old Vic for presenting one of the most weird and wonderful British premieres I've seen in quite some time.

Drama Queens, the brainchild of German artists Elmgreen and Dragset, presented five remote-controlled sculptures on stage with the actors providing a live voiceover from the sidelines.

Joseph Fiennes played an abstract, angular sculpture by Sol Lewitt flirting monstrously with a Barbara Hepworth sculpture played by Lesley Manville.

Spacey himself gave voice to an infuriatingly chatty silver rabbit based on the famous work by the American Jeff Koons. Jeremy Irons played Giacometti's tall thin walking man while Alex Jennings voiced a solid granite oh-so-Germanic untitled block inspired by the German artist Ulrick Ruckriem. [u umlaut]"

Full story at: Evening Standard

Sherlock Holmes

And there is more Alex on BBC Radio 7 this week. On Wednesday at 10.15 a.m. they will broadcast an episode from the Sherlock Holmes recordings, recorded in July 1993, called "The Dying Detective". Alex plays Savage. As usual, the show. can be listened to for a week after initial broadcast.

BBC Radio 7

Drama Queens

Alex is due to "appear" in a production of "Drama Queens" at the Old Vic on 12 October. This is a Gala event to raise money for The Old Vic Theatre Trust Creative Development Programme.

For more information see: Old Vic Theatre

Sentimental Education

Well, there's more Alex on BBC Radio over the next couple of weeks. He is reading the book at bedtime, Sentimental Education, by Gustave Flaubert. Readings are availabe for seven days after the original broadcast. The first episode was broadcast on 6 October.

Book at Bedtime

Thanks to Penny!

Miss Marple, Murder and Mirrors

Alex plays Inspector Curry in an episode of the Miss Marple mysteries. The episode is called "They Do It With Mirrors", Julia McKenzie plays Miss Marple, Joan Collins, Tom Payne and Penelope Wilton also appear. The episode is due to be broadcast in 2009 on ITV1.

39 Steps

Filming has started in Scotland on a new adaptation of John Buchan's "The 39 Steps". The IMDb has Alex in the cast list, but doesn't say which part he plays. The film is due to be broadcast by the BBC on Boxing Day this year.

Thanks to Lori!

Irish RM

On Sunday 5 October from 3.00 to 4.00 pm Alex can be heard in the classic serial "The Experiences of an Irish RM". The BBC gives the following description:

"When the affable, if somewhat foolish, Major Sinclair Yeates leaves the British Army and opts to become a Resident Magistrate in turn-of-the-century Ireland, he has no idea what adventures await him. As he tries to get on with his job, he finds the locals are out-thinking and out-manoeuvring him every step of the way. He plods on, trying his very best to do his job, but finds himself frustrated by a people whose every waking moment seems dedicated to thwarting the poor man.

The Experiences Of An Irish RM stars Alex Jennings as The Irish RM and Mark Lambert as Flurry Knox. Other cast members include Marion O'Dwyer, Cathy Belton, John Hewitt, Ingrid Craigie and Miche Doherty. The Experiences Of An Irish RM was dramatised by Christopher Fitz-Simon."

Radio 4

Thanks Penny!

Candide

This Saturday BBC Radio 3 will broadcast a recording of ENO's "Candide" with Alex playing the roles of Voltaire, dr. Pangloss and Martin. The BBC press release gives the following information:

"From the opening bars of the overture, the scintillating score and succession of brilliant and witty numbers, Leonard Bernstein's Candide is an enthralling, breathtaking, roller-coaster of a piece. With its affectionate parodies of operatic conventions and forms, it was a personal favourite of Bernstein's and, from its 1956 première, he tinkered with it, on and off, for three decades.

Candide is based on Voltaire's savage satire on 18th-century institutions and manners, whose ridiculously optimistic dictum "All's for the best in the best of all possible worlds" is relentlessly disproved by an unending sequence of misfortunes and disasters, death and destruction.

In this controversial production, recorded at the English National Opera in July, director Robert Carsen triumphantly updates the often surreal action from 18th-century Europe to Fifties America, and beyond, revealing the dystopian reality of the American Dream. Westphalia becomes West-Failure; the Spanish Inquisition is transformed into Senator Joe McCarthy and the Ku Klux Klan; Venice is Vegas; Eldorado, Texas. And, in a move that nearly caused the cancellation of the show in Milan, Voltaire's five deposed kings become Blair, Chirac, Bush, Putin and Berlusconi.

The acclaimed cast comes from the worlds of musical theatre and opera: the multi-talented Alex Jennings plays Voltaire, Pangloss and Martin; Beverly Klein is the Old Lady; Soprano Marnie Breckenridge is a sparkling Cunegonde; and the title role is taken by leading British tenor Toby Spence. Rumon Gamba conducts them and the Chorus and Orchestra of English National Opera."


Opera On 3 – Candide
Saturday 4 October
6.00-9.30pm BBC RADIO 3

Radio 3 - Candide

Thanks again to Penny!

Wodehouse, Second Part

This Friday Alex will be reading the second part of "Without the Option" by P.G. Wodehouse. The programme can be heard on BBC7 from 17.00 to 17.30, and for seven days after the original broadcast through the Listen Again service. Part one is still available there, until Friday.

BBC7