Four strange—and sometimes comic—tales on this program.

The first two stories are from an evening at Symphony Space hosted by the comic writer Ian Frazier, drawn from his anthology Humor Me.  Chip Zien, who starred on Broadway as the Baker in Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods,” reads “A Prayer,” by Paul Sims.  Sims, a writer  for Late Night with David Letterman and other television shows, petitions God for a dignified death (i.e., not naked, not involving the union protest rat, not something your friends will laugh about at your funeral…you get the idea.)  Literary commentator Hannah Tinti says the story reminds her of the Darwin Awards, which are bestowed each year on those who shuffled off their mortal coil most embarrassingly.

Continuing in the vein of what host Isaiah Sheffer has dubbed “liturgical comedy” is his own reading of Frazier’s “Lamentations of the Father,” with the simple but hilarious premise that the average suburban Dad is a worthy counterpart to the Almighty, with many commandments—most ending in “…but not in the living room.”

In a switch of mood and time period, the third story on the program is by the 19th-century master of scientific adventure, Jules Verne.  But unlike the robust novels for which he is best known—20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Around the World in 80 Days, The Mysterious Island, Journey to the Center of the Earth—this haunting tale, “The Storm,” is a surreal, supernatural and psychological episode that Hannah Tinti likens to Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol.”  The translation from the French is by the anthologist Alberto Manguel, and the reader is the Broadway and film star Tony Roberts.

The program finishes up with a story that is both melodramatic and comical, Ellen Currie’s “Robbed,” read by Christina Pickles. LISTEN TO THE SHOW