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Old 02-10-2008, 06:08 AM   #3
davem
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And so to begin... Episode 1: The Shadow of the Past

This is by way of an introduction to the series, with some comments on Episode One. Feel free to jump in with any thoughts of your own....

(Some of this is taken from the booklet which accompanies the CD set, some is bits & pieces of trivia picked up over the years, but most from a recording I've heard of an event to launch the series at the Church House Bookshop, on March 5th 1981. Present were Brian Sibley & Michael Bakewell (the adaptors), Penny Leicester (one of the Directors), Stephen Oliver (the composer) & Peter Woodthorpe & David Collings (who played Gollum & Legolas).

The BBC adaptation of LotR was the most expensive radio production the BBC had made up to that time. It cost something around £100,000, & the cast & crew had the luxury of spending between one & a half & two days per episode.

The BBC had decided on 26 half hour episodes (ie six months worth) which would be broadcast on Sunday lunchtimes & repeated on Wednesday nights. It was later edited & re-broadcast as 13 hour long episodes, & that's the form in which its now generally available on CD. Of course, the adaptors, Brian Sibley & Michael Bakewell, soon realised this would not be enough time to encompass the whole story, & that cuts would have to be made. Bombadil went. In the main, though, the cuts were small - but Sibley notes that there were many such 'small' cuts. All the scripts were sent to Christopher Tolkien in France for approval, & he kindly provided a tape of pronunciations & was available to answer any question sent to him. One cut that Sibley was pressed to make, but refused to do, was the Scouring of the Shire - its cut down in this adaptation, but its there. Sibley felt that Tolkien had put the Battle of Bywater in for a reason - that it had to be shown that the great events of the War of the Ring had to be echoed in the Shire - blood had to be spilled there too.

They managed to attract some big name theatre actors - Michael Hordern (Gandalf), Robert Stephens (Aragorn), Ian Holm (Frodo) - because theatre actors like radio drama: they can earn money in the studio during the day, & still tread the boards at night.

Sibley & Bakewell realised fairly soon that they would need a narrator, but what kind of narrator was the question. Should it be 'Tolkien', or an 'abstract voice'? Or maybe one of the characters? They decided against the latter (among other reasons because that would give away to anyone not familiar with the story whether that particular character survived or not!) & in the end went for a narrator somewhere between Tolkien & an abstract voice, but one who would be involved, & 'feel along' with the characters, & 'be involved' in the story.

Of course, radio drama by its nature imposes a problem on adaptors - if you don't hear a character speak you don't know they're there - as Bakewell put it, you may not notice if a character in a book doesn't speak for 100 pages, but in a half hour radio episode you have to have each character say something at least once.
The other problem is that you need to have someone ask questions to move the plot along. Bakewell says he usually chose Pippin. This lead Christopher to ask Bakewell 'Why is Pippin so stupid?'

New things were added as well as cut - a whole section from Unfinished Tales was added in - as was a scene in the first episode, where Sam brings some post to Bag End to save the postman another journey. Sibley commented that Christopher would be quite critical of such changes, but that he was also very supportive of their difficulties.

Another problem they had was in finding a way in to the story. They couldn't dramatise the Prologue & make it work. Sibley originally went for something along the lines of the Bakshi movie, giving an over view of the history of the Ring, but neither he, Michael Bakewell, or the Producer, Jane Morgan, were happy with the result. Then Morgan suggested that they begin with Gollum. Sibley wassn't sure, but tried putting something together & eventually came up with the beginning we have - a brief statement about how the Ring was made & lost, & how Sauron was defeated, & then straight to Gollum's capture & torture by the Mouth of Sauron.

Another problem they had was Sauron. Bakewell decided Sauron should not appear directly in the drama & his presence only be felt through the other characters. He felt that no other character in the story is 'absolutely evil' but only instruments of evil, & that absolute evil must be kept at a remove if it was to be credible.

And battles- on radio! As Bakewell noted they tend to sound like (in his words) 'Cloink-ouch-boink!'. Their solution was to use a mixture of words, music & stylised effects to create a mood & give the production 'its own sound'.

The music was by Stephen Oliver (Morgan had originally wanted Sir Malcolm Arnold). Oliver decided that he didn't want anything that sounded 'too grand', as most of the audience would be listening to it on small radios. He chose to use almost exclusively Violas & Cellos (the only real exception being Boromir's horn). Oliver commented that he found Tolkien's lyrics 'poor' - except for the alliterative verse, which he thought brilliant. The approach he took to setting them to music was quite practical - if it was a walking song he would use a walking rhythm' dum-dum-dum.

Peter Wodthorpe's (also Bakshi's Gollum) take on Gollum is interesting, & different to the one Andy Serkis took. For Woodthorpe, by the time Gollum loses the ring he is 'half animal' (as opposed to Serkis' 'addict'). You'll also notice that Woodthorpe's Gollum is never a 'tragic' figure as he is in the movie when he is a nice little Hobbit, suddenly overwhelmed by the power of the Ring. Here, he is Tolkien's 'mean little soul' - he wants the Ring when he sees it & simply throttles Deagol for it. Woodthorpe commented that this was central to his portrayal - Gollum was 'degraded & defeated' but he was also this 'half-animal'.

One thing you may notice in this production is the way Sibley & Bakewell avoid a fault that Shippey pointed out about the movie - that the audience already knows from the start that Bilbo's ring is the One Ring, so that it is not a shock to the audience when Gandalf discovers it. In this adaptation all we are told is

Quote:
Three rings they hid from him. But the others he gathered into his hands, hoping to make himself master of all things. Then was an alliance made against the Dark Lord, and Sauron was, for that time, vanquished. But at length, his dark shadow stretched forth once more, and he sought again for mastery over the Rings of Power.

One ring had come into the possession of Gollum, a slimy creature as dark as darkness, who kept it secret unto himself in the nether-most depths of the mines beneath the Misty Mountains. There it was hidden, even from the searching eye of Sauron, the Lord of the Rings.
We're told that one of the rings comes into the possession of Gollum, but not which one. We find that out when Frodo does (and for those of you who are interested, the sound effect used for the Ring in this production was made by running a wet finger around the rim of a wineglass).

So, to episode one. Your thoughts? Did it work well as an adaptation? Did it capture the spirit of the book? Did you feel you were in Middle-earth?
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