Edgar Allan Poe's Stories & Tales II (Mystery Theatre)

Rating:
Summary: An outstanding, dramatized, flawless audio production.
Review: From The Black Cat to The Purloined Letter, Stories & Tales II provides a full-cast production of five of Poe's finest mysteries, with supernatural influences upon murders and scandals marking his special brand of intrigue. Enjoy an outstanding selection of short thrillers here with the Players dramatizing the entire effort.

Rating:
Summary: An outstanding, dramatized, flawless audio production.
Review: From The Black Cat to The Purloined Letter, Stories & Tales II provides a full-cast production of five of Poe's finest mysteries, with supernatural influences upon murders and scandals marking his special brand of intrigue. Enjoy an outstanding selection of short thrillers here with the Players dramatizing the entire effort.

Rating:
Summary: An over-dramatic presentation of Poe's works
Review: I have bought several audiotheater's tapes from Amazon. Basically,thease audio plays come in two forms: Some are very faithful to the original novels or stories, such as 'The Secret Garden' and 'Captains Courageous', which can be described as a shorten versions of the original text, but with sound and dramatic effects. In my opinion, this approach, though old- fashion and lack of creativity in some degree, remain to be the best approach in introducing classics to listeners. The other method used by the Monterey Soundworks, seems to be more daring and more liberal in creating more 'characters' or 'plot' in to the stories. In this regard, the dramatic effect seems to take into account at the expense of the original stories. I had to say that "Poe's Stories and Tales II" had fallen into the second catagory. Take 'Black Cat' The story Poe wrote is from the first person narrative, while in this tape, another character, 'the priest' was added, to create a sort of dialogue between the two. It's all very well just for the dramatic effect, but it did kill the narrative flow of Mr.Poe. The other stories in this tape almost follow the same apporach, with stereotyped kind of 'add-on' characters abound the stories, the real tales seem lost and can not be found, just like the Purloined Letter