THEFT

Peter Carey’s characters are always dodgy and unreliable. In Theft, Michael Boone is a once-famous Australian painter now out of fashion and fresh out of prison. He lives in a backwater, taking care of a former collector’s property and his autistic savant brother, Hugh. Beautiful, manipulative Marlene wants to resurrect Michael’s career. But is it all a cover for getting a missing painting out of the country? Simon Vance develops a hardscrabble Australian accent for Michael that is completely authentic, with his belligerence, arrogance, and obsession perfectly rendered; we understand Michael, but we don’t like him much. Vance deals with the significant challenge of making Hugh believable--both “slow-witted” and linguistically playful--by developing a booming voice that expresses both independence and impairment. A.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine [Published: DEC 06/ JAN 07]