How
interesting after years of admiring The Browning Version that it's only now
that I realize the play is one-act and doesn't have the
applause-by-formerly-creeped-out-boys that the Michael Redgrave and the Albert
Finney movie versions have! I thought
the interview on Audible, by LA Theatre Works producer Susan Lowenberg was
between acts. It comes at the end. This means that I should be able to do a
contemporary version following the structure exactly. But the big difference between Crocker-Harris
and me is that I am always suspicious of student motivations and regard expressions
of thanks and appreciation as either
bribes or acts of kindness, rarely as sincere!
That wasn't always the case. In
my version, the teacher will have just seen the feedback online. For some reason I see it all in the office,
but it could be my home. Who will my
unfaithful spouse be?
I'm really off-put by Susan
Lowenberg's failure to follow up on certain comment made by her interviewee, Michael Darlow, who wrote a 1979 biography about Terrence Rattingon. Why, for example, was The Browning Version
panned in the United States? She doesn't ask. She doesn't even seem particularly interested. Interviewers should be like Oprah Winfrey, who really cared!
I just read
a review of the 1994 film version of The Browning Version by Roger Ebert, and I'm reminded why I didn't particularly like
him. He obviously wasn't familiar with
the play, and he didn't seem to understand the movie or the characters. I'm sure he couldn't identify with Crocker-Harris. He'd more likely identify with the more popular cricket star supplanting him as the final speaker.
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