David Maybury | Blog

News broke yesterday that Terry Pratchett’s Nation is to be transformed into a National Theatre production by Mark Ravenhill. Bookwitch reckons that it will be in the Olivier and will appear some time in November. So far that’s all the details I’ve read.

There have been plenty of decent other stage adaptations in the press this month - including The Snowman, Michael Morpurgo’s Why the Whales Came and Martin Murphy’s version of Peter Pan. And if that has whet your appetite - why not visit the Ark in Dublin to see Marina Carr’s The Giant Blue Hand - tickets are only €10!!

(See what I did there? Reeled ye in slowly, got you interested with news about the Terry Pratchett play and before you knew what had happened? I had you booking tickets for the Ark. Clever, huh?)

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I’m not sure what it is about stage performances that I have never been able to adjust to - everything seems forced (staged?). Someone crying on stage is just short of rubbing clenched fists under their eyes or a new character entering a room will nearly stomp for attention. The current Frank McGuinness adaptation of Miss Julie, Strindberg’s play about class, is no different.

The set built for the run was impressive - the kitchen is reproduced brilliantly with almost neurotic detail - but is it a good sign if all I can really praise is the stage and lighting? The actors - Catherine Walker, Declan Conlon and Mary Murray - deliver powerful performances at times but not until much later in the play.

I was dissappointed by McGuinness’s adaptation - the BBC Drama version was almost identical - except for the Irish-isms that have been injected. It was good, but not “an extraordinarily fluent and very earthy adaptation” as one review reports.

Dermod has a different take on things over at bonhomie.