28 April 2007

Tutti Frutti

Anything was always going to pale next to Black Watch, but Tutti Frutti held its own well, but ultimately it was a battle it was never going to win.

Nonetheless, my advice would be don't go to see it directly after Black Watch rather than don't go to see it.

John Byrne has adapted six hours of TV drama into three hours of stage drama and almost gotten away with it. The speed is the biggest problem, you know what's happening, but you don't care as much as you should. The performers were great, the set is magnificent and practical and the lines are good, there are just too many of them.

Having never seen the TV series I sincerely hope the rumoured BBC4 repeat run can be secured, as the somewhat disappointing play leaves me in no doubt that it will be fabulous.

NTW : It needs to be slowed down, as the characters have no chance to endear themselves to you before they have begun their "journey".

JTD : Bizarrely, the same thing because it demonstrates brilliantly how your viewing of television narrative differs from stage narrative. On TV you give the characters a chance to establish their personalities without verbally or physically signposting them, on stage the lack of that signposting makes it very difficult to empathise or sympathise with them.

1 comment:

Clair said...

If this isn't a series crying out for a repeat, I don't know what is. John Byrne is a total genius, and I'd love to see him pen something for primetime TV again - trouble is, they'd probably put David Jason in it.