AMADEUS
Radio 2, 9.15pm
On a good day for lovers of fine radio acting, F. Murray Abraham begins an eight-part reading of Peter Shaffer’s play, as adapted by Neville Teller. As in the film for which he won his Best Actor Oscar, Abraham tells the story from the point of view of the dying Salieri — Mozart’s friend, rival, champion and possible murderer. And a fine, lizardlike job he does of it — better, perhaps, than his work in the movie.
AFTERNOON PLAY
Radio 4, 2.15pm
The Booker Prize-winning John Banville conjures, from his imagination and their writings, the meeting between the Nazi existentialist Martin Heidegger and the poet and Holocaust survivor Paul Celan at Heidegger’s home, Todtnauberg, in 1967. Heidegger was a fan of Celan, and Banville’s brilliant play describes his attempts to convince the poet that he was not an anti-Semite or an apologist for atrocity. Nicholas Farrell is both gentle and strong as Celan, while Joss Ackland puts his juicy rumble to Heidegger’s best service. It is a pity that the brilliant and brave Hannah Arendt (Jemma Redgrave) comes across more like a lovestruck groupie than Heidegger’s eventual saviour.