Lost airtime? BBC Radio 4’s search for Proust’s masterpiece

The vast scope of À la Récherche du Temps Perdu was always going to make 10 hours seem too short – but there were highlights to savourLast week in the Guardian, I commended those of a bookish turn of mind to surrender themselves to the BBC’s 10-hour adaptation of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, broadcast over the bank holiday weekend on Radio 4. I had reckoned without the cricket, but even so, long weekends are, well, pretty long. So did the series deliver on its promise to transport us, like the narrator himself, back to the riverside at Combray and the salons of Paris?One of the central issues that faced dramatist Timberlake Wertenbaker and director and producer Celia de Wolff was how to balance the unparalleled sense of longueur of Proust’s vast roman-fleuve and the recollection of dramatic, frequently fruity incident. It is easier – and perhaps especially so in the grammar of radio – to convey dinner-party repartee than moments of reflection, even when they are performed by the measured, deliberate Derek Jacobi. Thus the ear was drawn more naturally to, for example, Frances Barber’s conspiratorial Madame Verdurin as she gossiped and plotted and decided who was in or out of her social circle. Continue reading…
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