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.
