Brideshead Revisited

Waugh wrote a massive novel, a sprawling, engaging family saga populated with extraordinary characters, brittle lives, privileged lives and woefully sad lives too. The cast of this dramatised adaptation worked so hard to portray this, some to good effect, some less so. But sadly they were on the losing side. As we saw in the dismal film adaptation of a few years back, Waugh’s novel is just too expansive to deal with in a few short hours. The playwright also wants us all to know that this is an adaptation of the book and not of the much lauded TV series. Well I am sad at that, as the TV series was a far better, far more authentic realisation of the original than this can ever be.
In the first half the story rattles along at such a speed that it felt like a “Reduced Shakespeare does Waugh” but with fewer jokes. In the second half the pace slows to a deathly expiration as Lord Marchmain slowly snuffs it with a death rattle reminiscent of a Carry On. I find it sad, when so many have worked so obviously hard, to say that something simply does not work, but for me this does not work. Just as the hideous “Durrells” TV series has driven me back to the Corfu Trilogy, so too has this deeply unsatisfying dramatisation. I cannot wait to turn that first page once again. Thank you for that.
7 June
Theatre Royal Brighton
Andrew Kay
1 star