Additional Waugh-related events have been announced for the upcoming From Page to Screen festival in Bridport, Dorset. See earlier post. Most important, Charle Sturridge, festival curator and a director of the 1981 Granada TV production of Brideshead Revisted, has invited Evelyn Waugh’s grandson, Alexander Waugh, to appear on the closing day of the festival. According to press reports in the Dorset Echo, they will discuss “Evelyn’s love of film and thoughts on adapting his work.”
In addition, the 1988 film of A Handful of Dust, also directed by Sturridge, will among the films to be offered. Although not mentioned in the news reports, Tony Richardson’s controversial 1965 adaptation of Waugh’s The Loved One will also be screened, according to the festival’s internet site. The script was by Terry Southern and Christopher Isherwood. Discussions will presumably follow both of those screenings which will be offered on the closing day.
The papers also report that Sturridge will appear in a discussion with actress Claire Bloom about her role in the 1963 adaptation of John Le Carre’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. Since she also appeared under Sturridge’s direction in the Brideshead adaptation, one can hope that their collaboration will form part of that discussion as well.
The festival’s overall theme is the adaptation of written works for film and TV. It will be held at the Bridport Arts Center in south Dorset on 30 March-3 April. The Waugh events are being staged in connection with this year’s 50th anniversary of his death in April 1966.
NOTE (24 March 2016): Charles Sturridge is interviewed about his role in the festival in today’s Dorset Echo. Here’s an excerpt:
Q: What is your favourite piece you have worked on?
A: Without doubt, the most formidable adaptation I worked on was the 1981 Granada Television adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. There are few examples of a 304 page novel making nearly twelve hours of screen time. I had nine days to prepare for what became two years work. The conventional wisdom of the time was to speed up the action to make good television, but instead, we took the opposite decision, to slow the story down so that tiny events could have enormous reverberations.
