Listen Up: "Little Women" Audiobook To Launch At High Tea
Christmas won't be Christmas without this new audio version of "Little Women" produced in the RI region.
True confession: I’m one of those readers who doesn’t like anybody messing with a beloved book. Most of the time, the movie, play or TV adaptation is an aching disappointment compared to the original. Except for one classic. If it’s Little Women, I’ll take any version, whether it’s from Hollywood, Broadway or on television. It’s all good. The heart, the authenticity, the goodness of the characters are somehow so baked into the story that it doesn’t matter who plays Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy. The essence always come through, stellar production or not.
And now, there’s an audiobook version to love, produced locally by Alison Larkin Presents, and narrated by popular local theater artist Anne Undeland. It will have its official launch at a high tea at Ventfort Hall in Lenox, Mass. on Saturday, Nov. 30.
Larkin is an internationally acclaimed comedienne, award-winning audiobook narrator, voice artist, actress, producer, screenwriter and the bestselling author of The English American, a novel. She’s also a Berkshires-based Brit who has made it a priority to employ the “brilliant” actors who also hail from the area. In the last three years, from her West Stockbridge studio, Larkin has produced over 62 audio titles in many genres, but recently has focused on books with female protagonists, including the complete novels of Jane Austen. Since 2016, Alison Larkin Presents has won eight AudioFile Earphones Awards for exceptional audio.
“I’ve been feeling a sense of urgency to put out stories with female protagonists, and I’d been looking for something for Anne to narrate,” said Larkin. “She’s incredibly talented and I thought she’d be a perfect fit for Little Women.”
Undeland, who has become a specialist in writing and performing one-woman shows based on the lives of famous (and infamous) women in history, agreed.
“Nineteenth and 20th-century women are in my wheelhouse,” she said. “We began talking about it in late summer, and we saw that the Hollywood moving is coming out this fall. We thought, why don’t we release it around the same time? Little Women is definitely in the air; what a great time to release the audiobook.”
Larkin, said Undeland, makes things happen fast. The summer conversation resulted in an early October recording. It took five straight days of reading, working 4 to 5 hours a day. Louisa May Alcott originally published the book in two volumes, and this version covers the original first part, following the March sisters from Christmas to Christmas. The audiobook includes a bonus interview between Larkin and Undeland.
“It was far more physically demanding than I expected it to be,” Undeland said. “But at the end, I felt so strong in my voice. What swept me up is the book itself.”
Part of the enjoyment of listening to an audiobook is hearing the narrator give a distinctive voice to each character even though, Undeland said, the point is not to create a caricature of a voice.
“It’s more the intentionality that feeds the voice,” she explained. “It’s a matter of creating a different mindset for each of the characters. Cadences and rhythms come out of that.”
At the launch on Nov. 30, Undeland — a Ventfort Hall favorite who has performed numerous productions there — will read an excerpt from the book, and she and Larkin will have a conversation followed by Ventfort Hall’s Victorian high tea.
“I hope we will have the chance to reminisce about Little Women and what it meant to our lives,” Undeland said. “There’s kind of a magic to the book. It’s so universal — about love, work and home. These things are always going to matter deeply to every human being.”
Launch of Little Women Audiobook Adaptation and High Tea
Saturday, Nov. 30 at 3:30 p.m.
Ventfort Hall Gilded Age Mansion and Museum
104 Walker St., Lenox, MA
$28 in advance; $32 day of event, including tea
For reservations, call (413) 637-3206.
