FOREVER

From the first plaintive, languorous sounds of a wind instrument, the canvas opens wide on a cultural struggle--on the intertwined history of a nation and a city--and on a robust adventure tale enveloped in myth. Hamill's saga covers a writer-artist's life well lived over four centuries, from the great good Irish house of his infancy to the canyons and towers of his adulthood in present-day New York City. It's a sprawling epic of ven-geance, whose various strands and themes are carefully balanced in this abridgment. Giving a gentle Irish lilt to the dialogue and effortlessly assuming the vocal patterns of other languages and genders, Stevie Ray Dallimore entices the listener as the drama shifts from swashbuckling tale to urban chronicle and as reality and fantasy blend. Hamill's personal insights into his work and his life, intoned on the final disc, offer a meaningful coda to his story. M.J.B. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine [Published: JUN/JUL 03]