The Observer, May 2, 1999
Books: Audiobook: Villette
LUCY MAYCOCK
Villette Charlotte Bronte BBC Radio Collection full-cast dramatisation, three
hours
In this BBC adaptation fine writing is not the focus sensation, lyricism and
passion are the driving forces in a recording full of the sounds of breaking
waves, stormy nights and the hissed confessions of a troubled mind. Lucy Snowe
is plain, penniless and without family. A woman with 'no talent' and 'no
standing', she secures a position as a schoolmistress in the French town of
Villette where she falls in love with the handsome Dr John Bretton, the admirer
of one of her students. In the midst of this mental turmoil she discovers a kind
of salvation in the growing friendship that she develops with a fellow teacher
Professor Paul Emmanuel. As Lucy Snowe, Catherine McCormack gives a
no-holds-barred performance; Joseph Fiennes is pleasantly stolid as the young
doctor a man without imagination and Harriet Walter does a fine job with the icy
Madame Beck, the school's proprietor.
Times Newspapers Limited, April 25, 1999
Talking Books
Karen Robinson
* VILLETTE. By Charlotte Bronte
This recent Radio 4 Classic Serial is a hugely enjoyable version of Bronte's
dark, overwrought and heavily autobiographical last novel. Penniless and plain,
but with a street-fighter's instinct for self-preservation, Lucy Snowe
(Catherine McCormack, left) travels to the continental city of Villette to find
work as a teacher in a girls' school run by the sinister Madame Beck (Harriet
Walter) and her magnetic "cousin" Monsieur Paul (James Laurenson). The use of
first-person narration keeps up the connection with the production's bookish
origins, but also perhaps makes Lucy a more straightforward narrator than she is
on the page. While coping with vain and uppity schoolgirls is well within her
powers, an infatuation with a young doctor (Joseph Fiennes), apparitions of a
ghostly nun, the machinations of the local priest and drugged hallucinations
are more of a trial. Crackling with repressed sexuality and moved along by
coincidences that would be laughed out of a contemporary writing class, Lucy's
struggle against a hostile world delivers the perverse satisfaction of an
appropriately ambiguous ending (full-cast dramatisation, BBC, 3 hours).
The Independent (London), April 10, 1999
BOOKS: SPOKEN WORD
Christina Hardyment
Villette
CATHERINE BAILEY'S dramatisation of Charlotte Bronte's last novel is the most
lively and arresting broadcast of a classic novel I have heard. Catherine
McCormack is heart-breakingly brave and vulnerable as Lucy Snowe, Joseph Fiennes
suitably prattish as the fickle Graham, Harriet Walter brilliantly mean as
Madame Beck. The spooky story of an English teacher in a French finishing
school, haunted by a mysterious nun, had its origin in Charlotte's own
experience of a French school - and the love she felt for the husband of its
headmistress.
A selection of Britain's brightest young acting talent has been assembled for this gripping adaptation of Charlotte Bronte's novel. Catherine McCormack stars as governess Lucy Snowe, whose infatuation with handsome doctor John Bretton (Joseph Fiennes) leads her to write letters to him that are never sent. McCormack's performance as the repressed Snowe jars occasionally, but Fiennes gives a suitably charismatic edge to Bretton over the three parts. There is an obvious chemistry between the two actors - the couple actually did fall in love while recording the play. Harriet Walter takes on the role of evil Madame Beck in a stroy that touches on the supernatural along its way to a rather ambiguous finale.
