Crossing over

Lynne Patrick

I went to the theatre last night. Not an unusual occurrence – I review for the local newspaper, and it’s a rare week when I don’t; sometimes I go two or three times.

The reason last night was a) worth mentioning, and b) a suitable subject for a Dead Guy post is that the play was an adaptation of a murder mystery novel, one of a popular series which had already been adapted for TV.

Anyone remember Cadfael? It’s fifteen years since the last TV adaptation, and I don’t know if the series ever made it to the US. He became something of an institution here in the UK – a mediaeval monk who solved mysteries using his knowledge of healing as a form of early forensic science, supplemented, of course, by being an all-round super-observant, hyper-perceptive sort of guy.

Last night, a theatre I sometimes visit was staging a ‘world premiere’ of an adaptation of one of the books. Someone I know was in the cast, and anyway it seemed like a good idea. I booked seats.

Modified rapture.

At first it was hard to tell exactly what was wrong. The dozen or so actors (unusually large cast for a small company) did just fine, give or take a villain who swashed a buckle or two too many and a good guy with the same problem. I didn’t even mind that Brother Cadfael himself wasn’t wearing lovely Derek Jacobi’s face as he did on TV; the guy who played him did an excellent job.

The company had clearly laid out a substantial amount of cash on sets, elaborate special effects for sound and weather, period music and costumes. The script...

Right. Yes. That’s where things began to come apart. Lots of short scenes, each in a different, heavily staged location. Not a problem in itself; short scenes and jump-cuts work fine on TV, but this wasn’t TV. There were long-drawn-out scene changes carried out by backstage staff dressed as monks and covered by endless mediaeval-sounding music. The pace, an essential component of murder mystery fiction in any form, was shot to pieces. It dragged.

As it progressed, I realized the whole concept wasn’t working. It was too ambitious. They were trying to cram a whole 80,000-word book, characters, locations, historical background, atmosphere, subplots, everything, into a couple of hours of dialogue. They used back-projection for some linking scenes – do they call it multi-media? – and it simply didn’t fit with the mediaeval setting. A couple of elaborate pieces of scenery were brought on for one scene, which could probably have been cut anyway. And when the stagehand monks wheeled (yes, wheeled) the trees on for the eighth time, I was hard pressed not to laugh.

The denouement, when it finally came, seemed tacked on; solving murders is what Brother Cadfael does, so there had to be one, but most of the story had been about finding out who was responsible for beating up a monk who had little to do with the rest of the action and the dead nun had somehow taken a back seat.

And I was left wondering, as I have on other occasions, whether it’s ever possible to make a success of adapting a novel into a stage play. And if it’s going to work, whether the trick is to move a long way from the original, and not be afraid to lose subplots and detail.

TV adaptations can be made to work, because TV has the facilities and money to go for realism. Dickens is great on TV; his intricate descriptions of locations, often pages long in the books, can be visually portrayed in seconds, and the move from one location to the next is almost instant. These days theatre almost by definition has to be stylized; the days of true-to-life drawing-room sets are past. This production with its large cast, lots of scenery and lavish effects clearly wasn’t cheap, but throwing money at a problem doesn’t always provide a solution.

Two of my two favourite leisure pursuits in one package: a murder mystery, and a visit to the theatre. On the face of it, a great way to spend an evening. Maybe it can be done; maybe I was just unlucky with this one.