The Stage

Production information

When remaking an 007 story, do you strip Bond bare or furnish him with every gadget and gizmo known to espionage fiction? In the first full-length dramatisation of Dr No, it was the Bond girl who was literally down to her birthday suit. Purists will have been happy that Honeychile Ryder wandered into Bond's orbit wearing nothing but a suntan and knife belt, as Ian Fleming saw her in his 1958 novel, rather than sporting the Ursula Andress white bikini, itself a seminal cinematic scene., In a canon that bristles with iconic significance, Dr No - the filmic template which launched the franchise as well as one of Fleming's best-loved novels - was, perhaps, the obvious choice for radio adaptation as part of the programmes marking the centenary of Fleming's birth. Radio producers Jarvis & Ayres had quite a job on their hands in marking their drama (adapted by Hugh Whitemore) out from the 1962 movie which delivered a straight narration of good versus evil and a sultry, troubled Bond in the years before the 007 films became layered with special effects.

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The strength of the 90-minute play was that it leant heavily on Fleming's original and not just in matters of female nudity. We saw Bond through Fleming's eyes and pen, not just in Martin Jarvis' cameo as the author/narrator but also because Toby Stephen's Bond was required to describe in writerly fashion whatever torment he was being put through.

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When aiming to create tension, cinema prunes dialogue for greatest effect. Despite the mood-altering qualities of music, sound effects and the adroitly-positioned pause, radio drama must keep the words coming, especially when your hero has poisonous, many-legged insects the size of his hands, crawling up his legs. Bond gave a feverish, dream-like account of his torture by giant spiders, the vivid account spilling from his lips like a racing commentator on an acid trip.

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The play opened with Bond and M (John Standing) discussing with the armourer the competing claims of various pistols, a scene written with such clarity that not even the least arms-friendly listener would have been drumming their fingers in tedium. But it failed by comparison with the film's lauded gun barrel sequence, in which Bond was seen through his weapon's sights.

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As 007, Stephens was urbane and seductive, but lacking the charisma of Sean Connery or the wit of Roger Moore. Lisa Dillon's Honey had a tantalising wild child appeal. David Suchet, who has excelled in his depictions of monstrosity, was drafted in as the villain Dr No and gave a gleefully cackling portrait of insanity. This was escapist Saturday afternoon fare, backed up by a sense that there was space for the metaphysical alongside the physical. Where had Dr No's soul gone to, wondered 007, after despatching the ogre, and before settling down to a night by the shore with Honey.

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Even for an intellectual, life on the frontline can have an allure that more bookish pursuits lack, opined David Hare in The Vertical Hour, his gripping drama of relationships, politics, truth and death. It was a treat to hear the original Royal Court cast led by Indira Varma as the intractable war reporter turned professor and Anton Lesser giving another masterclass in less is more acting, as the fascinating and flawed doctor capable of changing lives.

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Lucy Caldwell is a writer making waves in both drama and novel writing. Girl From Mars, her drama of a family frozen in time and yet inexorably changing after a daughter/sister goes missing was full of the tiny details and irritations which accompany tragedy.

Production information can change over the run of the show.