BRIDESHEAD REVISITED

I was a young extra in the famous 1981 TV series and can be seen (for about a second) in a tweed suit ambling gaily behind Anthony Andrews across an Oxford quad. The problem for any theatre adaptation is that the telly version (for those that saw it), with its gorgeous locations, lingers in the memory so much that it has rather obscured all other attempts to bring it to life.

Evelyn Waugh’s 1945 novel is full of syrupy yearning for an aristocratic way of life that, you could argue, finally vanished in the democratising fog of the Second World War. Even Waugh wrote in retrospect that he found its florid prose, its fascination with fine wines and food too rich. In his view, the novel was an over-reaction to wartime austerity and rationing. Still, it remains fondly in the public mind as a hymn to a dying era. In Bryony Lavery’s adaptation for this touring show, there’s no house to speak of, with geometric shutters closing each scene with a crisp snap on a cast that doubles up in various roles. The book is squeezed onto the stage at a hell of a lick.

Sebastian Flyte is the effete, well-born undergraduate with the teddy bear. It is through the eyes of his middle-class university chum Charles Ryder (played by Brian Ferguson) that we here see their friendship for what it is: an unambiguously gay love affair.

But the cast is uneven. To have three male roles played by one actress seems absurd. Shuna Snow’s depiction of Bridey is an unfunny parody of an old bore, not anyone real you are ever likely to meet. She also plays Rex, the Canadian plutocrat, and a German who has shot himself in the foot (literally).

Nick Blakeley’s stammering and acidic Anthony Blanche (his observation that ‘charm is the great English blight. It spots and kills everything it touches,’ could serve as the book’s motto) is not nearly outrageous enough. The one ace performance in this is Christopher Simpson’s Sebastian, who turns from a handsome feckless aristo into a sordid alcoholic, a portrait so unsympathetic it’s compelling.

Paul Shelley is a distinguished Lord Marchmain, whose prolonged death scene dramatises the debate about sin and soul rather cleverly. He also plays Charles’s father. Their hilarious encounter in which the old boy is maliciously indifferent to his son’s financial embarrassment is here sold a bit short. And neither Julia nor Lady Marchmain (in fox furs) make enough impression.

The problem is, compared to a book in which mood and tone are effortlessly fluid, this feels choppy and shoe-horned onto the stage. It has its moments, but it won’t satisfy hardcore Brideshead fans.

On tour until 2 July: www.ett.org.uk