Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 23

Radio 4 Extra celebrated Halloween with a selection of Gothic tales from the archive that included an adaptation of Loren D. Estleman’s Sherlock Holmes v Dracula , a reading of Oscar Wilde’s The Canterville Ghost , a reading of Tanya Huff’s “Quid Pro Quo” as part of A Short History of Vampires , and a forty-five minute adaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla starring Anne-Marie Duff, Celia Imrie, David Warner and Brana Bajic in the title role.

Each evening during the same week, Haunting Women presented five fifteen-minute supernatural tales by Dermot Bolger, while Benjamin Whitrow read Ghost Stories by M. R. James .

Christopher Lee’s Fireside Tales was a fifteen-minute series broadcast over Christmas in which the veteran actor read Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat”, Jerome K. Jerome’s “The Man of Science”, E. Nesbit’s “John Charrington’s Wedding”, Ambrose Bierce’s “The Man and the Snake” and W. W. Jacobs’ “The Monkey’s Paw”.

In October, BBC Radio 3’s Opera on 3 broadcast Opera North’s new version of Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades , featuring soprano Dame Josephine Barstow as the mysterious old Countess.

BBC Radio 2 celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the musical Phantom of the Opera with The Phantom Phenomenon in November. Lyricist Don Black talked to composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and others about their involvement in the longest-running Broadway musical of all time, which is estimated to have grossed $5.6 billion to date around the world.

Described as a “historical-shtetl-magic-realist-feminist-musical audio drama”, The Witches of Lublin premiered on New York radio stations WBAI and WNYC in April. Co-scripted and introduced by Ellen Kushner, the broadcast included Neil Gaiman amongst the voice cast.

Broadcast on Radio 4 in February, The Priest, the Badger and the Little Green Men from Mars was Rob Alexander’s half-hour profile of prolific genre writer-turned-reverend [Robert] Lionel Fanthorpe, who contributed readings from his own work.

Comedy broadcaster Natalie Haynes investigated the modern fascination with blood-drinkers and the walking dead in Radio 4’s half-hour Vampires v Zombies , while in the two-part Cat Women of the Moon on the same station, novelist Sarah Hook looked at how the SF genre pushes the boundaries of sex with the help of China Miéville, Iain Banks, Nicola Griffith and Robert Winston.

Hosted by The League of Gentlemen writer and actor Jeremy Dyson, The Unsettled Dust: The Strange Stories of Robert Aickman was a half-hour reappraisal of the author’s work, broadcast on Radio 4 in December.

The CD box set of Tales from Beyond the Pale: Season 1 was hosted by Larry Fessenden and included audio plays featuring Vincent D’Onofrio and Ron Perlman.

The “curse of Spider-Man” continued when actress T. V. Carpio, who took over the role of the evil Arachne after the original actress suffered a concussion, was forced to pull out of the $65 million Broadway show Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark in March following an injury sustained during an on-stage battle.

Following a series of accidents, multiple missed opening dates and a critical lambasting, controversial director and co-writer Julie Taymor was relieved of her day-to-day duties by producers the same month, and the troubled production shut down for more than three weeks as a new team was brought in to re-imagine the show. It finally opened in June to mostly unenthusiastic reviews.

Five months later, former director Taymor reportedly sued the producers of the show for $1 million compensation, claiming they had “violated her creative rights”.

Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller alternated as Frankenstein and his Creature in Nick Dear’s new adaptation of Frankenstein for director Danny Boyle, which premiered at London’s National Theatre’s Olivier in February.

Anita Dobson and Greta Scacchi portrayed Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, respectively, during the making of the 1962 movie What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? in Anton Burge’s Bette and Joan , which opened at London’s Arts Theatre in May.

That same month, Terry Gilliam directed Hector Berlioz’s opera The Damnation of Faust at the Coliseum, while Arthur Darvill portrayed a melancholy Mephistopheles in Matthew Dunster’s revival of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus at Shakespeare’s Globe in June.

Adapted by Bruce Joel Rubin from his 1990 movie, Ghost The Musical opened in July at London’s Piccadilly Theatre.

Despite a much-hyped revamp in November 2010 and a subtle title change to Phantom: Love Never Dies , Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical sequel still closed its London run at the end of August after just seventeen months. Although a Broadway transfer for the show was delayed, the new version received rave reviews when it opened in Melbourne, Australia, in the summer.

Meanwhile, Lloyd Webber’s production of The Wizard of Oz opened at the London Palladium in March. Michael Crawford starred in the titular role.

Following his stage success with Ghost Stories , the League of Gentlemen ’s Jeremy Dyson adapted three classic tales for Roald Dahl’s Twisted Tales . Polly Findlay’s production ran for a month from the end of January at London’s Lyric Hammersmith theatre.

Actress Judi Bowker (who played “Mina” in the 1977 BBC version of Count Dracula ) starred in Harry Meacher’s stage play Mist “After Dracula” , which ran for three nights at the end of February at the Rosslyn Hill Unitarian Chapel in London’s Hampstead area. Meacher himself portrayed Van Helsing in the play, which was set ten years after the Count’s death.

Based on his 1985 cult movie, Stuart Gordon directed Re-Animator The Musical , adapted from H. P. Lovecraft’s story. With music and lyrics by Mark Nutter and starring Graham Skipper as crazed medical student Herbert West, the critically-acclaimed stage show ran from March until August at The Steve Allen Theater in Los Angeles.

In July, The 2nd H. P. Lovecraft Festival was held at St. Marks Theater, New York City. Written and directed by Dan Bianchi, performance art company Radiotheatre! performed stage versions of “Reanimator” and “The Call of Cthulhu”.

Meanwhile, from its usual venue in Portland, Oregon, the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival expanded to Los Angeles in September. Along with screenings of short films and rarities (including a new version of The Whisperer in Darkness ), the event featured appearances by directors Roger Corman and Guillermo Del Toro and readings by Michael Shea, Cody Goodfellow and Jenna Pitman.

Alison Steadman, Hermione Norris, Robert Bathurst and Ruthie Henshall starred in a revival of Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit at London’s Apollo Theatre, while Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton were the stars of Jonathan Kent’s critically-acclaimed revival of Stephen Sondheim’s macabre musical Sweeney Todd , which made its debut at the Chichester Festival Theatre.

Ralph Fiennes starred as a tortured Prospero in Trevor Nunn’s sold-out revival of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest , which ran at London’s Theatre Royal, Haymarket, over nine weeks in September and October. The production took more than £1 million in advance ticket sales.

In early summer, the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre staged an outdoor production of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies .

The Veil , playwright and director Conor McPherson’s first piece in five years, dealt with secrets and spiritualism in 1822 Ireland, while a revival of Alan Ayckbourn’s 1994 play Haunting Julia was said to have caused the show to be stopped six times after audience members collapsed at the Garrick Theatre in Lichfield.