Stoppard’s happy BBC birthday

TOM STOPPARD recently turned 70, and the BBC is celebrating with radio productions of the playwright’s most recent London hit, “Rock ‘n’ Roll” (scheduled for its U.S. premiere this fall in New York), and “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” the 1966 show that launched his career. “Rock ‘n’ Roll,” about how rock music served as a soundtrack and battering ram for Czechoslovakia’s liberation movement, began streaming last Sunday on the “Drama on 3” weekly play series’ website (www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/dramaon3/) and may still be available today; then “Rosencrantz,” scheduled for a real-time broadcast at 1:40 p.m. today, takes over for a weeklong Internet run. Also thinking British is our homegrown, radio-theater show, “The Play’s the Thing,” produced by L.A. Theatre Works and carried Saturday nights on KPCC-FM (89.3). Currently streaming on the station’s website is a double feature of “Table Manners,” the first installment in Alan Ayckbourn’s comic trilogy “The Norman Conquests,” and “Her Big Chance” by Alan Bennett.

-- Mike Boehm