Brideshead Reviewed (More)

Several more reviews have been posted of the stage production of Brideshead Revisted. In the York Press, Charles Hutchinson finds much to like in the new theatre, the settings and the performances but also concludes that 

as Bryony Lavery’s two and a half-hour adaptation becomes more episodic, shedding its earlier abstract coat, it begins to drag like the 1982 television series once the Evelyn Waugh wit fades out and Rosie Hilal’s Julia comes to the fore. Like Mercutio, you rather miss the disgraceful Sebastian as the wounds deepen.

Dominic Maxwell’s review in The Times is behind a paywall and requires a subscription but does not begin well:

It’s hard to know which element is most intrusive in this whistle-stop tour of a great novel: Brideshead regurgitated. Is it the insistent insertion of Christopher Madin’s soupy soundtrack, all sensitive piano and la-di-da synthesized strings as it tries to force-feed us the grandeur and charm of Brideshead, the English country home at the heart of Evelyn Waugh’s 1945 masterpiece?

In What’s On Stage, Ron Simpson is also largely negative:

Evelyn Waugh’s novel is a problematic subject for stage adaptation, rather better suited to film perhaps with its louche behaviour in lush surroundings, though there its satirical edge and existential debate are likely to give way to the upper classes behaving badly with style. Bryony Lavery’s adaptation and Cruden’s direction firmly banish any Downton Abbey tendency, but Waugh’s unique mix of devotion and irony proves difficult to translate to the stage.

Comments by two bloggers are a bit more positive, especially about the theatre and the staging, but are overall mixed: British Theatre Guide and Kirkbymoorside  Town Blog

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