I meant to write about this a LONG time ago, but the iPod doohickey in my car quit working, which delayed my listening for a while, and then I had a lot of other things to write about, and then . . . well, anyway, I'm writing about it now! And I've just found out that it's available to buy, so you can hear it for yourself. Here, in brief, is my take.
- Most of the actors were excellent. They really did a good job putting together this cast.
- . . . But they could have done a better job with the adapting. If you're going to have Dickens narrate large stretches of the piece, you really ought to use his words. I could understand paring down the more flowery passages, but total rewrites add nothing.
- Also, some of the parts were overwritten, in particular Miss Pross and Charles Darnay. Which is a pity, as Alison Steadman and Andrew Scott are such good actors (the only two I was familiar with already). Miss Pross was turned into a swaggering, salty Cockney who never stopped talking, and they made this whole big running gag out of her having lots of brothers (not just the one brother) who had taught her all kinds of useful skills, that got stale after a while. Again, I don't see why any of this needed to be added.
- . . . As for Darnay -- well, we know he's not exactly super-bright, but I don't understand why they had to make him into a blithering idiot. His proposal to Lucie was absolutely painful. He stuttered and stammered so much, he made Colin Firth in The King's Speech sound eloquent.
- (Speaking of Colin Firth, I could have sworn I heard him playing the young Marquis St. Evremonde in a flashback. Sounded EXACTLY like him. Freaky.)
- Madame Defarge seemed unusually ready to play second fiddle to her husband, at least for a while.
- Paul Ready was a fine Carton. But his feelings toward Darnay never really changed, and one didn't get that sense of him becoming a part of the family. (As you know if you read my recent article on the subject, I think that's a crucial part of the story.) This Carton did what he did for Lucie, and that was it; he couldn't have cared less what happened to Darnay. And most of that beautiful character arc Dickens wrote for Carton in the last part of the book was simply not there.
- And there was no little Lucie. They already had one child actor to play the young Cruncher boy; I don't know why they couldn't have another.
I feel like I'm carping more than I had intended, and I'm sorry for that -- this was a big undertaking by a lot of talented, hardworking people, and in many ways it was enjoyable to listen to. I'd say it's worth hearing at least once. But in adaptations of this sort, I don't think it's a good idea to make changes simply because you can make changes. There always have to be changes of some sort, but they should be there to strengthen the story. But here, too often, that just wasn't the case.
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