adaptation
Orlando, Royal Exchange, ManchesterWednesday, 26 February 2014
“It’s all about you and the lusts of your flesh and the lure of your mind,” advised Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West when writing the spoof biography Orlando as a “love letter” to her. When she had finished the novel, depicting Vita as an... Read more... |
Agatha Christie's Marple: Endless Night, ITVMonday, 30 December 2013
“Her most devastating surprise ever.” Thus spake The Guardian, a quote happily slapped across the cover of the first paperback edition of Agatha Christie’s 1967 thriller Endless Night. While I wouldn’t go quite that far – that honour goes to her... Read more... |
Candide, Menier Chocolate FactoryTuesday, 03 December 2013
How do you solve a problem like...no, not Maria, Candide? Musicals are loved for their scores – and Leonard Bernstein’s one for this really is a cracker – but they’re held together by their books, i.e. the script/dramatic context that makes... Read more... |
Saving Mr BanksWednesday, 27 November 2013
Classic children’s stories often have a darker side; a shadowy area that lends an eternal quality to an otherwise merely durable yarn. Such is Mary Poppins. How and why it came to the big screen is one of Hollywood’s best tales, previously untold... Read more... |
Strangers on a Train, Gielgud TheatreWednesday, 20 November 2013
Whether you’re partial to Highsmith or Hitchcock, or both, there’s something deliciously exciting about the prospect of Strangers on a Train. Much of that anticipation lies in the intriguing question of which side of the material this adaptation... Read more... |
The Paradise, Series Two, BBC OneMonday, 21 October 2013
“Everything has happened so quickly,” Katherine Glendenning mused as the new series of The Paradise shot off the block. She'd been en voyage for a year, losing a father and gaining a husband, but now Katherine was back. Moray’s melancholy... Read more... |
LFF 2013: Saving Mr BanksMonday, 21 October 2013
It's dueling stars when Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson go quite delightfully toe-to-toe as Walt Disney vs P L Travers, author of Mary Poppins, in Saving Mr Banks, the closing film of the London Film Festival 2013. The title suggests the Russian doll-... Read more... |
By George: adapting MiddlemarchMonday, 21 October 2013
Adapting of 19th-century novels is sometimes looked down on as a kind of “heritage drama”. The assumption is that it is all about the externals, about the costumes and the coach wheels turning. It is certainly not what drew me to George Eliot. It is... Read more... |
Great Expectations, Bristol Old VicSaturday, 05 October 2013
Neil Bartlett, as he has demonstrated in his earlier Dickens adaptations of Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol, knows how to make gripping theatre out of a complex work of fiction. His Great Expectations rattles through the twists and turns of Pip’s... Read more... |
Listed: Jane Austen providesTuesday, 24 September 2013
Right at the start of the boom around 20 years ago, a Hollywood mogul is said to have told one of his people to get some more work out of that Jane Austen. She seemed like a good source of romantic comedies. Regrettably for all, there were only ever... Read more... |
Jane Eyre, Shanghai Ballet, London ColiseumThursday, 15 August 2013
For their first visit to the UK, Shanghai Ballet have brought a narrative ballet based on a Chinese theatrical version of Jane Eyre. It focuses on Bertha Mason, Mr Rochester’s mad wife in the attic, whose fate has often troubled readers, though the... Read more... |
The Lone RangerFriday, 09 August 2013
Kemosabe, The Lone Ranger is fun. Despite its star and producer blaming American critics for poor box office stateside, this film is Pirates of the Caribbean on horseback - and that's the Pirates franchise before it bloated in 2007.There is a lot of... Read more... |
