Radio 4, September 26, 2018, and on iPlayer

A girl is found amongst wolves…

The sequencing of the selections from Angela Carter’s collection of short stories is interesting for this Radio 4 series – producer and director Fiona McAlpine hasn’t followed Carter’s own order, bringing this tale from the end of the book to the middle of the run. It’s something quite different from the other pieces – far more about the difference between animal and human, although levels of innocence and how that innocence is lost are important too. Carnality, a very important feature of most of the stories, is not front and centre here in its sexual connotations at least; what separates man from beast far more so – and, in that respect, listen very carefully to the way that Carter uses adjectives throughout, and in particular the ambiguity of the ending of the story.

In Olivia Hetreed’s adaptation, Fiona Shaw’s narrator carries much of the story, with smaller spoken roles for the others in the cast – Lily Lesser’s Wolf-Alice communicates her feelings to the listener and we get some of the story relayed by Jonathan Tafler’s Duke. As is the case with all this series, sound designer Lucinda Mason Brown’s work transports the listener to the “edge of fairytale”.

Verdict: A different sort of story that works well in this medium. 9/10

Paul Simpson