CAUTIONARY VERSES

It’s hard to imagine a contemporary audience for Hilaire Belloc’s poems from the turn of the last century—unless it’s parents who want to terrorize their children with moralistic doggerel like “Matilda Who Told Lies, and was Burned to Death.” Martin Jarvis and Rosalind Ayers give an animated reading of these poems, trading lines and verses in a spirited dialogue. But if Belloc’s verses are satirical, that’s not coming through in this recording, which seems genuinely aimed at children rather than adults with a healthy sense of irony. The production is further hampered by the excessive repetition of a single musical phrase between verses. D.B. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine [Published: NOVEMBER 2010]