Brideshead Reviewed in The Tablet

Mark Lawson (presumably the one by that name whose day job is a BBC TV presenter) reviews the stage production of Brideshead Revisited in this week’s issue of The Tablet. He saw the play when it was performed last week in Bath. Here’s a summary: 

… Director Damian Cruden and designer Sara Perks eschew any sense of palatial wealth in a production that takes place on a mainly bare stage… A number of chairs do versatile service as cars, trains, boats and even occasionally seats…Waugh radically revised the novel in 1959, trimming a lavishness of language that he attributed to an over-compensation for wartime privation. Lavery strips back the words even further…

The play is more faithful religiously…The theatrical version proves surprisingly sensitive to this intention, honouring, for example, the prolonged debate about whether the adulterous apostate Lord Marchmain should be given the final sacrament on his deathbed… For absolute devotees of either the novel or the ITV series, the experience will be akin to Waugh having to hear Mass in a language other than Latin. But the play is generally an elegant act of compression and reimagination and will give pleasure …

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