Cirrus@Austlit

'MARK McSHANE’s 1961 thriller Séance on a Wet Afternoon has been adapted four times since its initial publication. The first, Bryan Forbes’s 1964 film of the same title, remains the best known – better known, in fact, than the novel. Though not especially successful when it was released, it has grown considerably in reputation. Richard Attenborough, who co-produced the film with Forbes as well as acting in it, later identified the role as his best performance. In 2002, after a long gap, the Japanese horror film director Kiyoshi Kurosawa made a telemovie that took further liberties with the plot but remained, as did the earlier film, more or less faithful to the essentials. There has been an adaptation for radio – first broadcast on BBC Radio4 in 2010, with the excellent Anton Lesser as narrator – and, most adventurously of all, an opera. The opera, by Stephen Schwartz, who is best known as the lyricist and composer of the musical Wicked, had its premiere in Santa Barbara in 2009, and was performed in New York in 2011.'(Introduction)