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Enough with the heavy breathing. Did they record this whole thing in a sauna, or something. If you just want to listen to it for your own purposes, it's great, but in a classroom, expect your students to feel awkward and make jokes about how some parts sound like a bad porno. I was hoping to use this in my 11th grade class to go along with the text of The Crucible, but there's just no way. The readers certainly do express the emotions in the scenes, but it's pretty overstated.
I wonder if this review will end up in the L.A. The Lincoln Center is unabridged and the reviews for the L.A. Theater Works make it sound abridged. All of these reviews appear to apply to the L.A. Theater Works version reviews as well. I wanted to read reviews about the Lincoln Center version. Theater Works reading of The Crucible. Co-mingling can be confusing.
However, it simply is no the unabridged version. I purchased this one as a supplement to the unabridged version in my classroom. If you do want this version, you could download this version from itunes in a matter of minutes rather than waiting for it to ship. While this version is a fine audio production, it is labeled incorrectly as the unabridged version. There are several parts that are edited out.
I'm in a Title I school with a high percentage of behavior problems and this was a "God send." The students listened much better with the taped reading.The actors are animated and match the personalities of the characters. In fact, they prefer the taped reading over reading aloud in class. I recommend it highly. This follows the play 99% of the time - every once in a while a word is substituted or a phrase turned around, but that's it. My students had no problem following the play.
There's a lot of mumbling, sighing, heavy-breathing. I bought this cd set to read the play along with my students. If you want to read along, I would try a different cd set. Anyway, if you are wanting to just listen to it, this is a great purchase. It's very theatrical and there are a lot of sound effects. The actors go so fast, that it's hard to follow along if you're reading the play.
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