Excellent Good Fair Poor : AUDIOCASSETTES

“Jailbird.” Warner. Books on cassette range from solo recitations to full casts and sound effects. Kurt Vonnegut’s satiric fable--told in the first person, as if by a Watergate conspirator just out of prison who befriends a bag lady who turns out to control the world’s largest conglomerate--takes a middle position. It’s a one-man show by actor Ray Welsh, but some quite tasty, clarinet-flavored music bridges the story’s sequences. Regrettably, the narrator’s voice is so mellifluous as to seem too little like a Vonnegut protagonist, whose tones should probably hint strongly of alcohol, tobacco and passion.