Sunday, 26 February 2012

Gulliver's Travels on BBC Radio

It looks as though I may gabble on this blog. I hope not.. We'll see. Just now I realise I am trying to put off doing something else I don't want to do.

But I have wanted to mark the passing of the BBC Radio Gullivers Travels. Here goes.

They played some odd tricks with the text and I am going to reread the whole thing because I have the new narrative replacing the half remembered one. I am not sure it is for the better.

In particular, there is a character in Laputa whom I do not remember. Played I think by somebody Waller-Bridge, but the character herself is not listed on the web.

I thought she was quite a hoot and I found myself not so much believing or disbelieving in Lemuel Gulliver's despair as in thinking I wouldn't mind hanging out with her on a foreign holiday!

Unfortunately, I think she may be a script writer's invention. So it goes. I once fell in love with a woman who was her own invention.

Apart from that, I had wanted to say what a pity it is that Swift's view has to involve his revulsion at the body. That's it. Said it now. All his other targets or many of them (pending a reread) are spot on; but his trouble with bodily fluids is tiresome

And the other odd thing is that, in this production, Houyhnhnms have Swedish accents. That was very peculiar.


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