Quarter 1 Review 8/9

014 Adaptation – New

Two particularly strong pieces here.  The Shepherd by Frederick Forsyth and adapted by Amber Barnfather was a haunting piece, though whether it deserved full binaural treatment (and moreover, whether it really benefited from it), I’m not sure.  I had only previously associated Forsyth with the abomination that was The Phantom of Manhattan, so it was a relief to find he could write a very good yarn.  The real revelation here was Luke Thompson, who could perform in at least six different accents in order to play the narrator, a young pilot of a Vampire in 1957 making his way from Germany to England on Christmas Eve.  He gets lost in the fog and his instruments fail, and he goes from a fairly routine trip to almost certain death.  With the last of his fuel, he does a triangle pattern which should alert anyone monitoring that he needs help and needs to be shepherded down somewhere to land.  To his relief, an old-fashioned Mosquito appears and guides him to safety, to a nearly-abandoned airfield at RAF Mitton.  There he finds out things are not quite as they seem.  The special effects were satisfying if sometimes intrusive, and the music was pretty (provided mainly by the amateur St Martins Choir), but as I say, the real star of this was Thompson and old-fashioned ACTING.  It was produced by Amber Barnfather and David Chilton.

The Hattie Naylor adaptation of Northanger Abbey also, coincidentally, stars Luke Thompson, this time as Henry Tilney.  While I had mixed feelings about this adaptation, overall, my impression of was favorable, though it started out with some annoying tics.  For example, I know in the book Catherine Morland (Georgia Groome) was a bit gauche and tomboyish, but that didn’t mean she fell out of bed every morning.  Also, being afraid of Henry’s facial hair was a bit much.  On balance, they did John Thorpe wonderfully, with his vapid and inane thunderings (“bish bash bosh!!”), but even managed to round him off with a little depth; so too did they make Captain Tilney sufficiently lusty.  Thompson was dreamy as Henry, and the Allens felt quite well fleshed out as well.  Catherine’s younger brothers and sisters were also quite cute.  I’m not sure about the presence of the narrator (Miriam Margoyles), but I think it did help linking the ten short episodes.  I very much enjoyed the jolting, overdramatic harpsichord theme tune and most of Catherine’s Gothic daydreams (for example the one in which she and Henry just gasped at each other, “Catherine!”  “Henry!”  “Catherine!” “Henry!” for a long time; and the one in which John Thorpe threatened Catherine, mainly with his shouty vocabulary).  It well captured what it was like to be 17 and did a good job of being true to the novel (mostly) and also explaining what the gently satirized Gothic craze was about. It also starred Tracey Wiles, Kim Wall, Ainsley Howard, Alison Belbin, John Bowler, Stephen White, and Finlay Robertson and was directed by Sally Avens.