Spoken Word

Medea

Penguin, c 1.5hrs, pounds 8.99

Man in your life getting you down? Try two chronological extremes of feminine disappointment at masculine manners. The Actors of Dionysus give an astonishingly tense and absorbing performance of Euripedes' fifth century BC , a woman for whom Congreve's phrase about hell's fury paling beside that of a woman scorned should have been coined. But it is also searching on the tribulations of parenthood, and David Stuttard's translation gives Euripedes' wisdom a classic turn of phrase which the well-balanced chorus puts over perfectly. Anthony Ofoegbe is suitably Doric as Creon, Mark Katz makes an insufferably pi Jason, and Tamsin Shasha is chillingly convincing as the mad but marvellous .

Man With No Eyes

by Fay Weldon

CSA, c 3hrs, pounds 8.99

Fay Weldon had something to say about vengeance in Life and Loves of a She-Devil, but the stories on Man With No Eyes, read with world-weary wisdom by Julie Christie, are altogether more resigned to the war between the sexes. They concentrate rather on variations on the theme of femininity, with especial reference to women's often destructive rivalries with each other. Outstanding in a deliciously astringent collection is "The Bottom Line and the Sharp End", the ultimate confrontation between ant and grasshopper. Damn Mrs Sensible, you will conclude. Choose rather the Mehitabel option: a short life and a merry one.