Un-dramatic Dramatisation
DON’T find that the BBC dramatisation of Cranford gives me more pleasure than the readings from the book which the NZBS produced about five years ago. In some ways it gives less. Dramatisation implies drama, and there is little drama in Cranford, and that little an embarrassment and out of keeping. Since the BBC always adheres faithfully to the spirit of a book in its adaptations (and blessings on it for this), Cranford has become a series ¢ -EE
of conversation pieces. Conversation there is in Cranford, of course, but to isolate it deprives us of the affectionately ironic narration which is one of the charms of the book. All the same, by casting myself into the right mood, a calm of mind approaching Nirvana, I have enjoyed this series and have pondered on the fact that this picture of a village old-fashioned at the time in which the story was set, the 1830s, would seem to us appropriately set much later than that; which suggests that the quality of old-fashionedness does not date, but is the same in any age. Now I swould thank the BBC for some of Mrs Gaskell’s other novels, which E. M. Forster. has praised as giving a fuller expression to her genius, and which I haven’t got around to read-
ing yet.
R. D.
McE.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19570621.2.34.2
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 932, 21 June 1957, Page 20
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222Un-dramatic Dramatisation New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 932, 21 June 1957, Page 20
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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