Showing results by narrator "Alan Cumming" in All Categories

The modern audience hasn't had a chance to truly appreciate the unknowing dread that readers would have felt when reading Bram Stoker's original 1897 manuscript. Most modern productions employ campiness or sound effects to try to bring back that gothic tension, but we've tried something different. By returning to Stoker's original storytelling structure - a series of letters and journal entries voiced by Jonathan Harker, Dr. Van Helsing, and other characters - with an all-star cast of narrators, we've sought to recapture its originally intended horror and power.

Ah, remember ye olde days when the family would gather around the giant Philco radio and listen to serials? You don’t? We don’t either. But apparently that’s how Cinnamon Bear was born on November 26, 1937, as the star of a holiday season cliff-hanger-style children’s radio series. We hear it was quite the rage!

Please note: This podcast is intended for adults only.

Macbeth: A Novel brings the intricacy and grit of the historical thriller to Shakespeare’s tale of political intrigue, treachery, and murder. In this full-length novel written exclusively for audio, authors A. J. Hartley and David Hewson rethink literature’s most infamous married couple, grounding them in a medieval Scotland whose military and political upheavals are as stark and dramatic as the landscape in which they are played.

Legal Immigrant is Alan Cumming's collection of musings on his experiences as a US citizen, growing older, and what it feels like to be an immigrant in today's America, featuring songs and stories that are as eclectic and idiosyncratic as Alan himself. The audio, recorded live at the Minetta Lane Theatre, is a smorgasbord of genres, styles, and tales. Replete with laughter, tears and, of course, provocation, featuring covers of songs made famous by a diverse array of musical legends.

In each section of Michael Cunningham's new book, we encounter the same group of characters: a young boy, an older man, and a young woman. "In the Machine" is a ghost story which takes place at the height of the Industrial Revolution, as human beings confront the alienated realities of the new machine age. "The Children's Crusade," set in the early twenty-first century, plays with the conventions of the noir thriller as it tracks the pursuit of a terrorist band which is detonating bombs seemingly at random around the city.

Alek and Deryn are on the last leg of their round-the-world quest to end World War I, reclaim Alek’s throne as Prince of Austria, and finally fall in love. The first two objectives are complicated by the fact that their ship, the Leviathan, continues to detour farther away from the heart of the war (and crown). And the love thing would be a lot easier if Alek knew Deryn was a girl. (She has to pose as a boy in order to serve in the British Airforce.) And if they weren’t technically enemies. The tension thickens as the Leviathan steams toward New York City with a homicidal lunatic on board....

With Pandora, Anne Rice began a magnificent new series of vampire novels. Now, in the second of her New Tales of the Vampires, she tells the mesmerizing story of Vittorio, a vampire in the Italian Age of Gold.

When Rilke, a dissolute auctioneer, comes upon a hidden collection of violent and highly disturbing photographs, he feels compelled to discover more about the deceased owner who coveted them. Soon he finds himself sucked into an underworld of crime, depravity and secret desire, fighting for his life.

Described by the New York Times as “a bawdy countercultural sprite” and named one of the most fun people in show business by Time magazine, Alan Cumming is a genuine quadruple threat - an internationally acclaimed, award-winning star of stage, television, and film, as well as a New York Times best-selling author whose real-life vivacity, wit, and charm shine through every minute of his third book, You Gotta Get Bigger Dreams.

Letters of Note, the book based on the beloved website of the same name, became an instant classic on publication in 2013, selling hundreds of thousands of copies. This new edition sees the collection of the world's most entertaining, inspiring, and unusual letters updated with 14 riveting new missives and a new introduction from curator Shaun Usher.

Star of stage, film, and television Alan Cumming delivers a virtuoso performance playing every role in the National Theatre of Scotland's bold presentation of Shakespeare's chilling tale of desire, ambition, and the supernatural. This radical reimagining of one of Shakespeare's most deeply psychological plays is set in a psychiatric unit in which Cumming is the lone patient. Channeling the story of Macbeth, he is inhabited in turn by each of the characters of the drama, including some of Shakespeare's most complex and troubled creations.

There is absolutely no logical reason why I am here. The life trajectory my nationality and class and circumstances portended for me was not even remotely close to the one I now navigate. But logic is a science and living is an art. The release I felt in writing my first memoir, Not My Father’s Son, was matched only by how my speaking out empowered so many to engage with their own trauma. I was reminded of the power of my words and the absolute duty of authenticity.

A perfect introduction for all ages to the breadth and beauty of Shakespeare's work, Tales from Shakespearehas become a classic work in its own right. The tales bring vividly alive the power of Hamlet and Macbeth, the fun of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the drama of The Tempest. Blending detailed narrative with original dialogue and poetic language, they fully convey the wit, wisdom, and imagination of Shakespeare's magnificent plays.

With ribald humor, wit, and incredible insight, Alan seamlessly moves back and forth in time, integrating stories from his childhood in Scotland and his experiences today as the celebrated actor of film, television, and stage. At times suspenseful, at times deeply moving, but always incredibly brave and honest, Not My Father's Son is a powerful story of embracing the best aspects of the past and triumphantly pushing the darkness aside.

Anil’s Ghost transports us to Sri Lanka, a country steeped in centuries of tradition, now forced into the late twentieth century by the ravages of civil war. Into this maelstrom steps Anil Tissera, a young woman born in Sri Lanka, educated in England and America, who returns to her homeland as a forensic anthropologist sent by an international human rights group to discover the source of the organized campaigns of murder engulfing the island. What follows is a story about love, about family, about identity, about the unknown enemy, about the quest to unlock the hidden past.

Robert Louis Stevenson was a novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer, and created some of the most famous and influential characters in modern literature. From Long John Silver and David Balfour to Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, his figures swiftly became the shorthand for piracy, monstrous medicine, and the slave trade in America. A master of atmosphere and an enthusiast of foreign travel, Stevenson wrote countless stories which have been enjoyed in film, television and theatre adaptations throughout the years.

The behemoth is the fiercest creature in the British navy. It can swallow enemy battleships with one bite. The Darwinists will need it, now that they are at war with the Clanker powers. Deryn is a girl posing as a boy in the British Air Service, and Alek is the heir to an empire posing as a commoner. Finally together aboard the airship Leviathan, they hope to bring the war to a halt. But when disaster strikes the Leviathan's peacekeeping mission, they find themselves alone and hunted in enemy territory.

What do you do when your new best buddy has been designated a scourge by the community and marked for imminent extermination? Just ask Kenny Rabbit. When the simple folks in the sleepy little village of Roundbrook catch wind that there's a dragon running loose in the countryside, they get the wrong idea and the stage is set for a fight to the death.

When an ordinary househusband and his ambitious wife decide to start a family, they discover there's more to making a baby then meets the eye. Help arrives in the form of a grieving gay neighbor, a visiting monarch, and the dashing young lieutenant who defects from her yacht. Bittersweet and profoundly affecting, Babycakes was the first work of fiction to acknowledge the arrival of AIDS.