GORMENGHAST on TV
By: Andrew OsmondDate: Thursday, January 13, 2000
GORMENGHAST is an absolutely splendid production. It's beautiful, witty, literate, and with a cast to die for, it's the best British telefantasy for many a year. It's also the first to rival Hallmark's 1995 GULLIVER'S TRAVELS - something of a yardstick in this area - for its visionary creation of a fantasy world on the small-screen. It's a first-class artistic creation and a technical wonder. See it.
If you're still reading after such a fulsome recommendation, you may want to know what GORMENGHAST is about! Gormenghast is in fact a gigantic castle, set in what may be another world or an exaggerated version of our own. At one point, Windsor Davies' burly captain of the guard lists the building's attributes: 638 rooms on the first floor, 503 on the second and 700 on the third - and that's just the East Wing. Then there's auxiliary buildings, extensions, follies, anterooms, closets, attics, basements, passages, unknown regions, darkness and rot... In short, Gormenghast is a world unto itself, populated by a remarkably diverse group of eccentrics.
There's Lord Sepulchrave (Ian Richardson), 76th Earl of Groan and Gormenghast's aged ruler, a doleful, joyless man whose sanity is unsteady. (At one point, the series resembles nothing so much as THE MADNESS OF KING GEORGE as directed by Jeunet and Caro.) His wife is the Lady Gertrude (Celia Imrie), a bored, almost pathologically self-absorbed aristo who lives for her cats and birds. This self-absorption is passed to their sulky daughter Fuchsia (Neve McIntosh), who lives in a world of romantic daydreams. Sepulchrave's sisters Clarice and Cora are similarly isolated, shutting themselves in their distant room to plan regaining the power they consider theirs.
Meanwhile, the underlings include Flay (Christopher Lee), the Earl's dusty, devoted manservant who rarely speaks a full sentence; Doctor Prunesquallor (John Sessions), the infuriatingly smug but kind surgeon; Nannie Slagg (June Brown), an eternally befuddled old nurse; and Barquentine (Warren Mitchell, best known in Britain as the politically incorrect Alf Garnett), irascible guardian of Gormenghast's traditions. Fans of the source books by Mervyn Peake should note that Barquentine is conflated with his predecessor Sourdust.
Not all these characters make it to the last part, and others become prominent along the way. The most prominent figure, however, and the one who provides the series with its narrative drive, is none of these but an outsider, Steerpike, played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers. Steerpike begins as a bullied kitchen-boy, a nobody, who through luck and guile works his way up through the Gormenghast hierarchy. The question of whether Steerpike is more hero or villain is the saga's main ambiguity, and even at the end viewers may be divided.
GORMENGHAST is based on the acclaimed novels TITUS GROAN and GORMENGHAST (each covered in two episodes), written by artist-poet-author Mervyn Peake. As with any series based on much-loved books, the challenge was to satisfy admirers of the original while attracting newcomers to the Gormenghast world. In this, the creators and especially scriptwriter Malcolm McKay have triumphed. Yes, the story has been simplified. Moreover, no TV production can convey the complexity of the characters' inner landscapes, one of the books' joys. And Peake fans may be initially disconcerted by the necessarily short scenes and fast pace.
But this is no dumbing-down. Many of the complexities and character subtleties are intact, and newcomers will need a second viewing to catch all the ironies and foreshadowings. On the script, it's hard to tell where Peake's dialogue ends and McKay's begins; the fusion is seemingly effortless - a brilliant achievement. As for the actors... well, as I said, it's a cast to die for. There really isn't a performance that's anything less than compelling. Meyers as Steerpike is amazing, seducing, scheming and bullying by turns, one of the deadliest tricksters on screen. My other favorite is Sessions as the flamboyantly erudite Prunesquallor - but then he was my favorite in the books, too.
Moving to the technical side: From the early sequence in which Steepike teeters and prances on the roofs of Gormenghast, you know you're in for something special. The sets, constructed on vast sound stages in England's Shepperton Studios, are gorgeous, doing full justice to Peake's twin loves of vast scale and minutiae. The number and range is incredible: bedrooms, courtyards, cluttered attics, along with Countess Gertrude's vast chamber devoted to cats, which looks like an Arabian Nights illustration.
The handsome Gormenghast exteriors, largely inspired by Peake's childhood China, are produced by an effective mixture of models, computers and paintings. And then there are the costumes... again, it takes a second viewing to appreciate them all. Each principal has a different, lovingly detailed wardrobe, helping remove the last vestige of the mundane and immerse the viewer in Peake's imagined society. The music, by Richard Rodney Bennett with choral passages by John Tavener, is beautiful, and the opening sequence - fires in what turns out to be the eye of Lady Gertrude's albino crow - adds the final touch of class.
Inevitably, there are criticisms. The most serious misjudgment, I think, is to open the first episode on a note of instant hysteria, as the castle reacts to the birth of the heir to Groan. For those people who can't watch, say, Terry Gilliam films because of 'too many people shouting at each other,' there's a danger they'll be scared off at the outset; a great shame, as things settle down soon after. (The first book, in contrast, reeled in the reader with pages of ornate description before a single line of dialogue.)
Some material in the third episode, involving Gormenghast's academics (there's a very funny cameo from ex-Goon Spike Milligan) and Prunesquallor's man-hungry sister, is amusing but not well integrated into the main story. And the fourth part starts with a surprisingly poor blue-screen effect as characters go riding before Gormenghast castle.
These sound like nitpicks and they are. Peake's novels were often deemed untranslatable to the screen; this adaptation proves that wrong definitively. Utterly faithful to Peake's spirit, this mini-series is a wholly valid work in its own right, appealing to anyone who loves melodrama, satire, dynastic sagas or created worlds. In other words, it's a kind of crossover for lovers of I, CLAUDIUS, Shakespeare's history plays, and/or Professor Tolkien.
GORMENGHAST is the first great TV fantasy of the new century, and bodes well for whatever comes next. As I said at the beginning: just see it.
A BBC/WGBH Boston co-production in association with CHUM Television. In four parts: Episode 1 airs in Britain on Monday 17th January, on BBC2 at 9pm. Producer: Estelle Danniel. Screenplay: Malcolm McKay, based on the novels by Mervyn Peake. Director: Andy Wilson
Starring:
Steerpike: Jonathan Rhys Meyers
Lord Sepulchrave Groan: Ian Richardson
Lady Gertrude: Celia Imrie
Fuchsia: Neve McIntosh
Dr Prunesquallor: John Sessions
Barquentine: Warren Mitchell
Flay: Christopher Lee
Nannie Slagg: June Brown
Clarice: Zoe Wanamaker
Cora: Lynsey Baxter
Titus Groan (12): Cameron Powrie
Titus Groan (17): Andrew Robertson
Professor Bellgrove: Stephen Fry
Irma Pruesquallor: Fiona Shaw
Swelter: Richard Griffiths
Mollocks: Eric Sykes
Keda: Olga Sosnovska
De'ath the Headmaster: Spike Milligan
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