Post by Leonore on Oct 19, 2011 6:40:14 GMT -5
This post talks about content of the radio performance and as such...may contain some spoiler content...proceed at your own risk!! 
A friend sent me the box set of Tales from Beyond the Pale, just in time for Halloween (!), which contains Man on the Ledge performed by Vincent D'Onofrio and others. I enjoyed the story immensely, but then, when I was growing up, we had a local radio station that would play the old radio serials/plays like The Shadow and Hitchcock's The Lodger late at night on Friday nights. We would lay in the dark, letting the voices and the sound effects (and our imaginations! ;D) scare the dickens out of us!
D'Onofrio's voice control and modulation gives the listener, in my opinion, a clear sense of his character's emotions. You can see him out on that ledge. I won't talk about the story itself, since I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't had the chance to hear it. There was one thing, however, that really struck me after I listened to the program in its entirety as a bit unusual/humorous in an odd sort of way.
In the story, D'Onofrio's character, John Alba tells a policeman that "a mother bird warns her unhatched chicks about how difficult their lives will be." At the end of the tale the policemen repeats this fact to another policeman. It reminded me of the Subway episode from Homicide where D'Onofrio's character, John Lange tells Pembleton about the sugar maple leaves and at the end of the episode Pembleton shares that information with Bayliss. Just one of those odd little coincidences that makes you say, "Hmmmmm"!!
A friend sent me the box set of Tales from Beyond the Pale, just in time for Halloween (!), which contains Man on the Ledge performed by Vincent D'Onofrio and others. I enjoyed the story immensely, but then, when I was growing up, we had a local radio station that would play the old radio serials/plays like The Shadow and Hitchcock's The Lodger late at night on Friday nights. We would lay in the dark, letting the voices and the sound effects (and our imaginations! ;D) scare the dickens out of us!
D'Onofrio's voice control and modulation gives the listener, in my opinion, a clear sense of his character's emotions. You can see him out on that ledge. I won't talk about the story itself, since I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't had the chance to hear it. There was one thing, however, that really struck me after I listened to the program in its entirety as a bit unusual/humorous in an odd sort of way.
In the story, D'Onofrio's character, John Alba tells a policeman that "a mother bird warns her unhatched chicks about how difficult their lives will be." At the end of the tale the policemen repeats this fact to another policeman. It reminded me of the Subway episode from Homicide where D'Onofrio's character, John Lange tells Pembleton about the sugar maple leaves and at the end of the episode Pembleton shares that information with Bayliss. Just one of those odd little coincidences that makes you say, "Hmmmmm"!!
