HARD TIMES

[Editor’s note: The following is a combined review with OLIVER TWIST.]--“Cliffs Notes”meets “Masterpiece Theater.” If you like turgid nineteenth-century melodrama, you’ll certainly enjoy these tapes, for they are slick, professionally--albeit unimaginatively--acted, and meticulously produced in the BBC's house style. Warning: Do not listen to these dramatizations expecting to find Dickens. Adapter/Director Nigel Bryant has excised everything that lifts the master's works high above conventional scenery chewing. For blood and thunder, these plays will do fine; for more satisfying Dickens on tape, we recommend the readings of Martin Jarvis and Miriam Margolyes. Y.R. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine [Published: AUG/ SEP 01]