Quarter 1 Reviews- 013 Adaptation- Old

013 Adaptation – Old

Lucinda Brayford by Martin Boyd (adapted by Elspeth Sandys) is an Australian novel of which I had never heard (although that’s unsurprising given my woeful lack of knowledge about Australian literature).  It ended up being an immensely wrenching drama with shades of Sister Carrie in its query about what is life actually for (if anything)?  The cast is, understandably, first-rate.  Lucinda (Juliet Aubrey) is a young Australian heiress whose mother, Julie (Angela Pleasance), is obsessed with marrying into the English aristocracy.  Lucinda’s father, Fred (James Laurenson), owns a network of stations and is therefore rich, though rather common.  He disdains Lucinda’s slightly older suitor, Tony (Matt Day), as a “poodle fancier” because he is into interior decorating and design.  It doesn’t escape the listener’s notice that Lucinda’s life would have been much better if she’d married Tony in the first place.  Instead, she has her head turned when her mother takes her on a trip to England (I confess I felt some empathy with her there), where she meets the Brayford family, landed but penniless gentry.  Lucinda seems to be making quite the match when she marries Hugo Brayford when he is on duty with his regiment in Australia.  Hugo is very much emblematic of the nineteenth century and acts like a nineteenth century gentleman:  he wants his trophy wife (in a very minor way he does care for Lucinda, but that’s as far as it goes), he wants his heir, and he wants his wife’s money.  Lucinda is charmed by him and doesn’t realize the problematic nature of the match until it’s too late.  The family she marries into is generally better than Hugo:  his enigmatic, artistic, probably gay older brother Paul (Paul Rhys), Hugo’s bourgeois step-mother Marian (Penelope Wilton), the self-effacing Arthur (Michael Cochrane).  She also falls in quite quickly with Hugo’s best friend Pat (Mark Straker).  What ultimately makes this narrative different from thousands in the nineteenth century is the fact it’s set on the cusp of the First World War.  Jonathan Firth, who (perhaps unfortunately for him) almost always seems to play weedy, seedy aristocrats (except for when he played Prince Albert, against type), gets to subvert this type slightly, because of what happens to Hugo in the War.  Meanwhile, Lucinda’s younger brother—the very Australian Bill (Nick Boulton)—is devastated when she leaves Australia and never comes to visit (this is her husband’s wife, not hers).  Written in 1946, this novel seems to rail against Victorianism and modernism in equal measure and seems to hold Victorian antecedents of the Brayfords and the Vanes responsible.  Juliet Aubrey is very sympathetic as Lucinda, much as she was as wronged wife Irene Forsyte in the radio adaptation of The Forsyte Saga a few years ago.  Lucinda Brayford also starred Miranda Barber, Joann McCallum, Stephen Hogan, Robert Hastie, Helen Longworth, Alex Tregear, Niddi Del Fatti, Pax Baldwin, Hugh Dickson, and Eleanor Bron.  It was directed by Janet Whittaker and originally broadcast in 2005.

I had heard a lot about the 2012 adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo as adapted by Sebastian Baczkiewicz and directed by Jeremy Mortimer and Sasha Yevtushenko; it was mentioned, very briefly, in my PhD about radio and audio drama.  However, somewhat surprisingly, given how much radio drama I was listening to in 2012, I had never heard it before. It was a significantly long Classic Serial (in terms of hours), which I can only suppose reflects the length and complexity of the book.  It’s a well-crafted, less-than-traditional adaptation, as you would expect by veteran radio writer Baczkiewicz.  There’s a narrator, the grown-up Haydée (Jane Lapotaire), but there is a really nice effect in this adaptation where the lines of dialogue from unfolding scenes are intercut with her narration.  This aids the sometimes non-chronological way the plot unfolds.  However, the real strength is in the acting, which is all top-notch.  Toby Jones infrequently gets to play heroes, and is somewhat typecast as the craven Danglars, one of the conspirators who transform innocent, heroic sailor Edmond Dantes into the ruthless, calculating hand of vengeance, the Count of Monte Cristo.  Danglars, a sailor on the same ship as Dantes, conspires with Fernand (Zubin Varla), who is in love with Dantes’ fiancée Mercédès (Josette Simon), to get Dantes sent to the Chateau d’If (the Alcatraz of early nineteenth century France) on trumped up charges of Bonapartist insurrection, where Dantes is expected to rot and die.  He survives, however, with his cell-mate Abbé Faria (Richard Johnson), a rather forbidding man who coaches Dantes in how to get his vengeance.  The moment for escape finally arrives (rather like a similar incident, it must be said, in The Man in the Iron Mask).  Dantes finds the Abbé’s hidden cavern of jewels on the nondescript rock of Monte Cristo, in the process making friends for life with Jacopo (Joe Sims), who mistakes him for a Maltese sailor (and rather endearingly calls him “Maltese” throughout the rest of the drama).  The jewels make Dantes rich, and so he transforms himself into the Count of Monte Cristo while first masquerading as various men of the cloth to find out how and why he was imprisoned.  This takes him to Caderousse (Ben Crowe), a seeming practice run for Victor Hugo’s Thénardier, an innkeeper who ultimately strangles his wife over a precious jewel.  Decades later, the well-established Monte Cristo is ready to strike at his enemies (and reward his friends, the Morrells).  Fernand has become a decorated general, but Monte Cristo exposes his treachery and greed.  Mercédès, who married Fernand after waiting a long time for Dantes to return, is spared along with her son; she alone seems to be the only character who recognizes Dantes even though he has close contact with all these people he knew previously.  Guess all that time in the Chateau d’If took a lot out of him.  Maybe he needed better moisturizer.  Anyway, this also introduces the character of Haydée, the daughter of a Turkish ally who was sold into slavery through Fernand’s actions.  She seems to be in love with the much older Dantes, but that never seems to come to anything.  Monte Cristo has to play a longer game with Danglars and Gérard de Villefort, the crown prosecutor who put him away.  De Villefort is, in my opinion, one of the most interesting characters in the story, extremely flawed but perhaps the most self-aware of those Monte Cristo revenges himself upon.  He is played by the extremely able Paul Rhys providing perhaps the most emotionally satisfying performance of the drama.  Monte Cristo subtly tortures de Villefort and Danglars’ wife, Hermine (Stephanie Racine), with their shared secret.  Meanwhile, Heloise de Villefort (Kate Fleetwood)—no paragon of virtue herself—has been trying to disinherit her step-daughter Valentine (Lizzy Watts).  It only remains to be said that Iain Glen delivers a tour-de-force performance as the titular character, with a voice so clear it has stayed in my head for weeks afterwards.   The Count of Monte Cristo also starred Robert Blythe, Karl Johnson, Will Howard, Paul Stonehouse, Adam Nagaitis and Eleanor Crooks.

Quarter 4 Reviews - 013 Adaptation - Old

013 Adaptation – Old

It would have been surprising indeed if I had disliked a dramatization of another Robert Westall novel, and indeed, I found this adaptation of The Stones of Muncaster Cathedral to be very well-made—and naturally, quite nastily scary. I think it’s safe to say it’s set in the 1980s or early 1990s in the fictional Muncaster, a northern town, where Joe Clarke (Peter Meakin) comes from a family of steeplejacks, whose firm has been hired to tidy up the towers of Muncaster Cathedral.  There’s one tower in particular with a sinister reputation.  The drama is framed very well in a non-chronological narrative, with skeptical police sergeant Allardyce (Terry Molloy) interviewing Joe in the middle of the mysterious events after a child has leapt to his death from the sinister tower.  Joe, Allardyce, and historian Reverend Morris (the particularly excellent John Webb) eventually team up to try to thwart the forces of evil.  The only thing I didn’t like in this story (and sad to say, it’s a feature of Westall’s work) was the wholly secondary presence of the only female character, Barbara Clarke (Sunny Ormonde), defined solely in her role as hysterical wife and mother.  The Stones of Muncaster Cathedral also starred David Holt, Tim Black, Richard Mitchley, Gillian Goodman, Zita Sattar, and Anthony Peddlar.  It was directed by Rosemary Watts and broadcast originally in 1996.

Quarter 1 Reviews- 013 Adaptation- Old

013 Adaptation – Old

The Pickwick Papers was an impressive, monumental adaptation from 1977-78, in eight hours adapting the 600+ pages of Dickens’ first novel.  While I was impressed generally by its faithfulness, towards the second half I did wonder why certain incidents were being kept in and others left out.  With an adaptation of this length, much of the story tells itself, and Dickens’ dialogue and eye for absurdity shine beautifully through.  I was surprised to realize how sexist the story really is, with almost every female character included merely for comic value.  I take this as evidence of Dickens’ youthful difficulty with writing female characters, resolved in his later work only to the extent that heroines were angels, and the rest of the female characters were grotesque or comic or both.  Not really a man who understood women, for the most part; more’s the pity (especially as compared with Wilkie Collins).  Needless to say, the performances were all top-notch (other than the ones in which grown women were deployed to play children; a poor strategy at the best of times and something that BBC radio drama didn’t really get away from until the 1990s).  One thing in particular I wanted to say about the production was that I really appreciated the bond between Pickwick and Sam Weller, which even more than in the book seemed the kind of platonic devotion between friends who, despite being master and servant, were bonded more deeply than to any other human beings.  If you feel compelled to slash that, then so be it; I for one don’t.  Unfortunately, the only episode I missed was “Christmas at Dingley Dell,” which very much disappointed me as they had clearly originally transmitted it to go out around Christmas 1977 (hence why it was being played on Radio 4 Extra around Christmastime).  I only finished The Pickwick Papers in 2018 and this adaptation made me want to read it all over again. Adapted by Barry Campbell and Constance Cox, it starred Simon Cadell as Dickens, Freddie Jones as Pickwick, Philip Bond as Winkle, Michael Graham Cox as Tupman, Stephen Thorne (rather against type) as Snodgrass, Paul Chapman as Jingle, Tim Wylton as Job Trotter, Jack May as Wardle, June Whitfield as Miss Rachael, Michael Troughton as Joe, Douglas Livingstone as Sam Weller, Nigel Anthony as Bob Sawyer, Tim Piggott Smith as Ben Allen, Peter Vaughn as Sgt Buzz Fuzz, and Rosalind Ayres as Arabella Allen.  Whew!  It was directed by Jane Morgan.  

Speaking of Wilkie Collins . . .  I was unsure about this 2001 adaptation of The Woman in White, one of my favorite novels (and what I saw of the summer 2018 BBC TV adaptation left a lot to be desired).  Nevertheless, I knew Martyn Wade’s batting average for adaptations was pretty good, so I persisted beyond the first episode, which I found a little underwhelming.  I’m glad that I did, because I ended up quite enjoying this adaptation and appreciating how it cut through the intricate epistolary nature, as well as the emphasis on visual spectacle, of the novel to make a radiogenic and pacey sound drama.  It did so, in part, by utilizing a number of monologues and narration provided by various characters which corresponded roughly to the way the novel was told, while still usefully telling the story through dialogue.  I was concerned, at first, that Toby Stephens was miscast as Walter Hartright.  I am a big fan of Toby Stephens (his James Bond was the best one, as far as I’m concerned), but was unsure that his vocal quality was quite right for the somewhat restrained Hartright.  However, he repaid sustained listening, for I had forgotten how dogged and determined Hartright has to be in order to match wits with Count Fosco.  Juliet Aubrey, so memorable as Irene Forsyte, was excellence as Marian Halcombe, and Emily Bruni managed to bring the somewhat passive Laurie Fairlie to life here.  Jeremy Clyde’s performance as the ultimately pathetic Sir Percival Glyde was better than the original character warranted.  Directed by Cherry Cookson, the adaptation also starred Alice Hart and Philip Voss.

Apparently A Séance on a Wet Afternoon by Mark McShane was based on a book.   although it was recorded in 2014, it sounded very period, as if it had been recorded decades ago (helped, no doubt, by an old-style byline introduction).  In it, Myra, played by an absolutely pitch-perfect Caroline Strong, is a medium who is convinced that the only way to make it big is to kidnap a young girl from an elite family, then call the family up with visions of how to find the girl.  Myra’s long-suffering husband, Bill—played by an unrecognizable Robert Glenister—follows her plan to the letter.  The problem arises when he accidentally smothers the girl.  Carl Prekopp also sounds period perfect as D.S. Payne.  Myra is a bizarre character to play, so oddly devoid of human feeling, yet so self-assured.  A Séance on a Wet Afternoon also starred Nick Underwood, Jasmine Hyde, Lizzy Watts, Gerard McDermott, and Jane Whittenshaw, and was directed by Bruce Young.