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Yuri Rasovsky

Yuri Rasovsky

  • With the premiere of two new film versions of the Snow White tale, Blackstone enters the fray with its own adult, edgy, and not altogether serious full-cast exposé of fairy-taledom. At last it can be told! Was Snow White really as pure as the driven snow? Did her allegedly wicked stepmother get a bum rap from the Grimm brothers? What went on behind the closed Dutch doors of the dwarves’ cottage? How many handsome princes does it take to screw in a light bulb? These and other burning questions may or may not be answered in this new pseudogothic audio play that Blackstone commissioned from award-winning author and audio dramatist Yuri Rasovsky. 

  • “Joan of Arc, a village girl from the Vosges, was born about 1412—burnt for heresy, witchcraft, and sorcery in 1431—rehabilitated after a fashion in 1456—designated Venerable in 1904—declared Blessed in 1908—and finally canonized in 1920. She is the most notable Warrior-Saint in the Christian calendar, and the queerest fish among the eccentric worthies of the Middle Ages.”—George Bernard Shaw

    With Saint Joan, Shaw reached the height of his fame as a dramatist. Fascinated by the story of Joan of Arc but unhappy with “the whitewash which disfigures her beyond recognition,” he presents a realistic Joan at war not just with British invaders but with realpolitik. This is a masterpiece of the theater of ideas, presented in the most eloquent, vital, human, and moving terms. Blackstone commissioned this production from the award-winning Hollywood Theater of the Ear.

  • Long before Western writers had even conceived the idea of writing detective stories, the Chinese had developed a long tradition of literary works that chronicled the cases of important district magistrates. One of the most celebrated of these was Judge Dee, who lived in the seventh century AD.

    This book, written anonymously in the eighteenth century, interweaves three of Judge Dee’s most baffling cases: a double murder among traveling merchants, the fatal poisoning of a bride on her wedding night, and the suspicious death of a shop keeper with a beautiful wife. The crimes take him up and down the great silk routes, into ancient graveyards where he consults the spirits of the dead, and through all levels of society, leading him to some brilliant detective work.

  • The insidious Fleet Street barber slit his first throat in an 1846 "penny dreadful," one of those gaudy serialized novels that gleefully offered thrills and gore to sensation-hungry Victorians. TitledThe String of Pearls, it told of Sweeney Todd, whose shop stood next to St. Dunstan's Church, just a few blocks from the Royal Courts of Justice. On this site, he robbed and murdered hundreds of customers. To dispose of their remains, he carried them to an underground bakery of one Mrs. Lovett, whose pie shop was a few blocks away. She ground the cadavers into stuffing for her meat pies, the favorite midday repast of the lawyers who worked nearby and who got their shaves from Sweeney Todd. The man you lunched with yesterday couldbeyour lunch today!

    Before the serial's final chapters even hit the stands, the first stage version, pirated from the already published installments, was packing them in at a London theater. Since then there have been numerous stage, literary, and screen versions of the story, most notably the hit Sondheim musical. Blackstone Audio has commissioned this, the first audio version of the tale, from the Audie® award-winning Hollywood Theater of the Ear (The Sherlock Holmes Theatre,The Oresteia). With tongue in cheek, writer/producer/director Yuri Rasovsky has gone all the way back to the original penny dreadful to imbue an old string of pearls with new luster—and fresh blood.

  • Blackstone is pleased to present the first ever audio recordings of the only two Holmes plays written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This specially commissioned production by the Hollywood Theater of the Ear is a unique, must-have audio for all Sherlockians.

    In Sherlock Holmes, Professor Moriarity, the Napoleon of crime, plots with would-be blackmailers to have Holmes killed. And the normally love-proof Holmes falls for an exceptional woman.

    What is the secret of the shocking death of poor Enid’s sister, whose dying words were, “the speckled band”? Only Holmes can find the answer and save a helpless girl from certain death in The Speckled Band.

    When Holmes retired, it created a financial crisis for his friend Watson, who owes money to mobsters who want either their cash or his blood. The surprising upshot is: Ghastly Double Murder in Famed Detective’s Flat, a one-act comedy by producer-director Yuri Rasovsky, here receiving its audiobook premiere.

  • In the folklore of Eastern European Jewry, a dybbuk is a wandering soul that comes to rest in the body of a living person. In this case, the dybbuk is an impoverished student that possesses a young bride on her wedding day. She is taken to a great Chassidic rabbi for exorcism. But before he can expel the spirit, the sage must discover who the dybbuk was in life, why he has possessed the maiden, and most importantly, how to balance the scales of cosmic justice.

    Part folk tale, part love story, and part allegory, The Dybbuk re-creates the atmosphere of a bygone era, with all its rich humor, music, folkways, magic, and humanity. This Audie Award–winning production by the Hollywood Theater of the Ear, the only sound recording of this revered play in the English language, was made possible in part by a grant from Steven Spielberg's Righteous Persons Foundation.

  • When this groundbreaking, serialized dramatization premiered on 320 US radio stations, critics were unanimous in their praise, and it won numerous honors, including the George Foster Peabody Award, the Pulitzer Prize of broadcasting. Now twenty years after its first airing, Blackstone Audio is pleased to present this outstanding production.

    The 2,600-year-old poem tells of a man, a hero of cunning rather than brawn, who inhabits three worlds: first, the world of his own reality—his wife, his son, his home; secondly, the world of myth in which gods and demigods sport and battle; finally, the world of sorcerers and monsters, of magic and ghosts and unspeakable terrors. The exploration and interweaving of these three worlds contribute significantly to the delight that The Odyssey’s audience has experienced throughout the ages.

    Synopsis of Episodes:

    The Suitors of Penelope
    Commentary by Richard Posner, professor, law and government, University of Chicago

    The Voyage of Telemachus
    Commentary by Charles Bye, visiting professor, University of Athens

    Free at Last
    Commentary by Arthur Adkins and Wendy O’Flaherty, University of Chicago, and Gregory Nagy, Harvard University

    The Great Wanderings
    Commentary by Wendy O’Flaherty, University of Chicago

    Monsters of the Sea
    Commentary by Arthur Adkins, University of Chicago

    The Swineherd’s Hut
    Commentary by Arthur Adkins, University of Chicago

    A Beggar’s Homecoming
    Commentary by Eric Hamp, University of Chicago

    The Contest of the Bow
    Commentary by Albert Lord, Harvard University

    Program host: Edward Asner

    Cast:
    Irene Worth, Shepperd Strudwick, Barry Morse, John Glover, James Deuter, Eloise Kummer, David Mink, Ron Parady, Robert Scogin, Megan McTavish, Tony Mockus, Francis Guinan, Michael Rider, Jordean Culbert, Ward Ohrman

    Scholar Advisors:
    Peter Arnott, Tufts University; Jarl Dyrud, University of Chicago; Peter Green, University of Texas at Austin; Albert B. Lord, Harvard University; James M. Redfield, University of Chicago; and D. Nicholas Rudall, (chair) University of Chicago

    Announcer: John Doremus

    Made possible in part by grants from TRW and the National Endowment for the Humanities.