I have long observed that we seem to be moving from a verbal into a visual age. This is
noticeable particularly in the world of television
advertising, where it is possible to watch thousands
of pounds of visual ingenuity, perfect in its beauty,
which is accompanied by a fatuous, unpoetic,
ungrammatical commentary that might have been written
by a ten-year-old. Or at least, a ten-year-old thirty
years ago. Similarly it’s possible to buy a computer
game which has had thousands of man-hours spent on
programming the graphics, while its messages to the
user are full of misspellings and dreadful grammatical
errors.
So it is strange that now, that wonderful
verbal utterance, Gormenghast, those books of hundreds
of thousands of words by Mervyn Peake, every word of
them polished and perfectly placed, have finally been
adapted for television, half a century after they were
finished and after such a long period of general neglect.
But as well as having an extraordinary verbal
facility, Peake was an artist, and the books are
amazingly visual. Of course, the television
production was visually stunning. A real effort had
been made not only to conform as closely as possible
to Peake’s descriptions, but to make them as seductive
to the eye as possible. The colours at the beginning
were reds - ranging from deep scarlet to sepia. In
the last episode they had become burnt umber, and
dark greens, dark blues and greys predominated.
Oddly, an opportunity was lost in the last episode for
a striking visual finale, where Steerpike is trapped
in a flooded room, only the window as exit, with the
entire castle closing in, many people in pursuit in
boats, each with a lantern, making the waters of the
room gold, and where the castle walls become
populated with heads. "She turned her head
upwards, and the stone acres rose dripping into the
night. But the great facade was anything but blank;
for from every window there was a head thrust forth.
And every head in the glow of the torchlight was of
the colour of the walls from which it protruded, so
that it seemed that the watchers were of stone, like
gargoyles, each face directed to the brilliant
barge-light that weltered on the waves outside the
‘cave’." But in general the visuals were not
only sumptuous, but were designed to be as much like
Peake’s description of them as possible. The
consequence was that for people familiar with the
books, there was not that jarring dissonance which
comes when what is essentially a personal vision is
translated to the screen. Certainly, there was not a
lot of difference between what I saw and my own
personal images.
Similarly, the cast were modelled as far as possible
on Peake’s descriptions and on his own drawings, which
littered the manuscripts of the books. Using human
beings it was not possible to make the characters
conform exactly to what Peake described, but in
general they came as close as it was possible to be.
Fiona Shaw's Irma Prunesquallor in particular, with her gyrating
neck and her grimacing lips, both of which seemed to have a life of their own, was so close that she
almost seemed perfectly to match Peake’s grotesque
portrait.
Unfortunately other choices were not so good. Neve
McIntosh made a valiant effort to portray Fuchsia, and
was certainly responsible for some of the most
emotional moments of the series, but one has to ask
whether she was the right person physically for the
part. Fuchsia is described as being ugly. Peake says
that with a small twist she might have become
beautiful, but, like Titus when he was born, she is
supposed to be ugly in appearance. In the same
way that Jane Eyre is always played by an elegant and
beautiful actress, so Neve McIntosh was made ‘ugly’ by
the addition of poorly-applied makeup and thick
eyebrows. It didn’t work.
Another character that didn’t seem right was June
Brown as Nannie Slagg. With the demise many years ago
of that wonderful British actress who played little
old ladies - I am told her name was Esmé Cannon
- the perfect Nannie Slagg became unattainable. But
June Brown was not in my view a good choice for the
part. Nannie Slagg is snobbish and sometimes
aggressive, but her heart is kind, and her snobbery
and aggression are so ineffectual and so short-lasting
that no one takes any notice of them In the book on
several occasions Fuchsia pretends to be unaware that
she has left her hand within range, and Nannie’s
punishing hand slyly creeps up and ineffectually slaps
it. And then, more often than not, Nannie bursts into
tears and has to be comforted by Fuchsia. June
Brown’s character was much more forceful,
and spent much of the time complaining and attacking
others. So that on the one occasion when she did
burst into tears, when Keda left, a moment that should
have been poignant, it was unconvincing. She spent a
lot of time insulting Steerpike, presumably so that he
might subsequently murder her. In the book she died of natural
causes. Despite the way she made herself appear
small, Nannie Slagg remained a slightly less
self-righteous Dot Cotton.
Ian Richardson as Sepulchrave was excellent,
expressing well both the melancholy, and the inner
kindness that had been suppressed by the ritual of
Gormenghast. Celia Imrie made a good Countess,
although the production didn’t give us the impression
of growing wakefulness and intelligence as the effects
caused by Steerpike became more noticeable.
And Steerpike himself was rather more presentable than
Peake’s character. The Welsh accent seemed slightly
anomalous, but of course there was no reason why it
should have done. It was Steerpike who was
responsible for a couple of jarring moments, when he
did a Hitler impersonation in the first part, and
quoted Shakespeare in the last. The whole point of
Gormenghast is that it is not of our world. By
pulling it back here, you are diminishing Peake’s
vision. Indeed, in the last book of the trilogy,
Titus Alone, the world is at the same time more
similar to our own, containing helicopters and
factories, and even further away in its surreal
conjunctions. It is its other-worldliness that
makes the parallels so effective.
Steerpike's 'political' views seem to be given too much
prominence in the adaptation. Of all the things it
might be, the Gormenghast trilogy is most certainly not
an allegory of any kind, political or otherwise. Again,
by even hinting at this interpretation, you are reducing
the power of Peake's imagination. Even in the last book,
when Peake's experience of Belsen became more overtly
expressed, there is nothing so crude as political or social
allegory, and to suggest there is diminishes the books.
Swelter is one of the more grotesque characters in a
gallery of grotesques. It was a touch of brilliance to
give him a fang, because at the same time it makes his
appearance less human, and also gives his words a slushy
quality which go well with the character. It is a shame
that when he tried to assassinate Flay we were
deprived of the trail of cakes.
Flay himself seemed slightly awkward at the beginning of
the series, perhaps because his verbal style looks better
on paper than it sounds in the flesh. But as the series
went on one warmed to the character, either because
Christopher Lee became more used to the character, or we
did.
I felt after seeing the first episode that it was
unfortunate that Dr Prunesquallor had been made so
camp. His homosexuality was made very evident,
whereas in the books it was, as in real life,
something that might have been inferred, but was
never explicitly stated. We had the impression that
when he accepted Steerpike as his assistant, he was
swayed in his decision by lust for the youth's body
rather than, as in the book, admiration of his intellect
(which possibly concealed the more basic reason). His
motives, in short, were made less subtle. Fuchsia called him Dr Pru,
instead of Dr Prune, and one was worried that in a
later episode he might be made to appear in drag
parading up and down the Stone Corridors, but
fortunately that didn’t happen. He also lost his
laugh, but that was just as well, because in real
life it would have been intensely irritating. He was
played well, and remained, next to Fuchsia, probably
the most sympathetic character in the series.
It was unfortunate that his terror in the presence of
the countess was lost in the adaptation, because it was
the opportunity for much humour, and made the way the
two characters came together towards the end of the
second book more striking. We also missed the wonderful
ambivalence of his attitude to his sister, where he is
either being totally embarrassed by her or desperately
trying to protect her.
In the books Bellgrove has a face of great nobility,
but an internal consistency of jelly. Unlike Stephen
Fry’s version, his inner kindness does not become
obvious to the reader until the game of marbles with
Titus, when the young Earl is imprisoned - a very
striking image from the books which, unfortunately, was
not included.
Visually it was difficult to fault the series. It
seemed to me that verbally there were many errors of
judgement, and some serious lapses.
One of the worst things occurred in the first episode,
when we saw Fuchsia’s adventure book, and, later, her
writing on the wall of her room. In both cases her
name was misspelled! This was
unforgivable. Surely there was someone on set who
could spell?
In many cases dialogue was added. Obviously this has
to be the case in an adaptation. But was it necessary
in the series to add so much? For example, when
Steerpike visits the rotting corpses of the twins, in
the book he feels the stirrings of madness, and
willingly gives in to them, strutting, dancing and
hooting round the bodies. This scene could have been
chilling and effective without words, as it is in the
book. Having Steerpike deliver such trite lines as
"I’m mad, mad, mad," does no service to
Peake.
Another bad moment came during Sepulchrave’s madness.
He is found in his bedroom, perched on the mantel
above the fire, believing that he is an owl. He calls
Swelter, the cook. He asks him whether the traps in
the kitchen are full. Swelter, not understanding,
nervously says that they are. He asks whether ‘they
have been given to the cats’. When Swelter says they
have not, says to him: "Bring me a plump one." A line which fully expresses the horror of the
moment. In the adaptation this became "Bring me
a mouse." Peake’s horror reduced to the mundane.
The above change is really irritating, because there
was no possible justification for it. Obviously when
you compress two enormous books into four hours, the
dialogue has to suffer, but there seems to me to be no
justification for making changes just for the sake of
it. Particularly when the writer you are dealing with
has the verbal facility of Peake. In every case, when
the dialogue lost its sparkle and became mundane it
was because it had departed from Peake’s original.
At one point in the books after Fuchsia has become
infatuated with Steerpike, she is suddenly brought up
short by the contempt in his tones during a moment of
crisis. At the end of the scene she starts to leave
the room, but then turns back and says: "Steerpike, I
think you’re going soft." The David Glass
Ensemble performed a very successful theatrical
adaptation of the books, and managed to squeeze the
essence of them into two hours, perhaps because they
made the adaptation very different. David Glass said
that the only line of dialogue they had difficulty
with was that one, so apparently uncharacteristic of
Fuchsia.
I believe that what is happening there is that
Fuchsia’s unconscious mind, that analytical and
rational part of her that has up to now been buried
beneath her romantic yearnings, finally finds its
voice. It is at that point that Steerpike recognises
the danger of having her as an enemy, and makes up his
mind to seduce her.
It is a crucial line, but a difficult one, and the BBC
version solved the difficulty by leaving it out
altogether.
Fuchsia’s suicide was handled oddly, because in the
books it was not a suicide at all. Instead of
listening to that inner voice, she becomes captive of
her romantic ideas, and finally, fantasising about
her own death, without realising what she is doing,
stands on the windowsill of her room, above the
floodwaters. A knock at her door brings her back to
consciousness, and she starts at finding herself
balanced so precariously. She turns, to try to get
back into her room, loses her footing, and falls,
striking her head on the way down.
The adaptation has her jumping, and we lose the
tragic irony of her death.
The music is effective throughout, and is not
over-used. It is a happy conjunction of music and
visuals which makes the opening so effective. The
flying rook accompanied by the treble voice singing
Richard Rodney Bennett’s setting of the
professors’ song from the second book, accompanied
halfway through by sweet harmonies from the strings,
immediately gives the impression of something special
and out of the ordinary. John Tavener’s choral music
gives a sense of occasion throughout, and by the time
we hear the Hindemithian brass music at the end the
music has successfully heightened the emotion and
sense of occasion. A nice touch was at the end of the
final episode, where we heard different music, which
segued into a string arrangement of the professors'
song, giving us a feeling of closure.
Apart from some things which I felt could have been
done better, all in all it was an adaptation which
strove to be faithful to the books, and much of the
time succeeded. It is a delightful and unexpected
thing to find myself criticising points of detail
rather than the overall conception. Certainly, back
in the sixties, when no one had heard of Peake, and
it seemed that the books were destined for an
undeserved oblivion, it seemed impossible that anyone
would ever wish to adapt them and remain true to the
author’s conception. It is to the credit of the BBC
that they were prepared to finance this project, and
that they allowed the director a free hand, rather
than making the series more mundane and perhaps more
acceptable to the viewing public.
Now, perhaps, it is time to start thinking about
Titus Alone, the third book of the trilogy.