At last, here it is! The much awaited audio adaptation of ROBERT RANKIN'S surreal 'Brightonomicon'. Has it been worth it? Well, yes it has.
First impressions are good, it comes in a nice little box that looks like an old fashioned TV or 'Chronovision' if you will and it is adorned with a catching illustration of The Lad Himself, the cosmic dick, Mr Hugo Rune. Be aware though that the box is easily damaged/scuffed as it is made from cardboard, particularly where the 'window' is showing the TV Screen.
The other CD case has an equally fetching illustration of 'the most evil man who ever lived (apart from Nixon)', Count Otto Black. There are 7CDs in all. There is also a booklet detailing the cast and crew credits, a note from Mr. Rankin himself and some production notes. A nice touch would have been some cast photos and biographies because WHAT A CAST! More on that later. This a minor niggle as the website that was set up in advance of this production does an excellent job. The design inside and the CDs themselves all look excellent.
As is the assembled cast. David Warner is perfect as HUGO RUNE and one really can't imagine anyone else in that role. Rupert Degas does a great job as RIZLA and works very well with David Warner. Special mention must also be made of Michael Fenton-Stevens as the narrator and Mark Wing-Davey as FANGIO. However, the first thing you will hear is the superb score by Hugh Edwards and Jeremy Carroll that perfectly sums up the weirdness of these tales. The choice of Graham Rogers as the ANNOUNCER was also inspired.
I've so far only read a handful of Rankin's books (shame on me)and the Brightonomicon is not the strongest title in my opinion. That would be 'The Witches of Chiswick'. However it is one of the better books and I have a fondness for it because I know the area very well indeed (The discription of White'awk is very illuminating). It is the logical choice for adaptation because of its structure with most chapters in the book ending dramatically, perfect for cliffhanger installments and FAR-FETCHED of course being the word.
Generally I think this is the best adaptation one could hope for, as I would imagine Rankin is quite hard to translate into audio as some of the humour is based on footnotes, or references to past characters and books.
There have been inevitable changes and one of the ones I am not keen on is the character of THE MONK, played by Elliott Stein. I don't remember this particular character in the book, but no doubt it is performing an important plot function.
The weaker parts of the book tend to be the weakest on audio (I have the Nurse Hurse sequence in mind here) and the magic tends to depart slightly whenever David Warner is absent. I'm not sure the audio will do much to appeal to Non-Rankinites (unless of course it is broadcast on the radio) as Robert Rankin is for me an aquired taste and the Brightonomicon is perhaps not the best introduction, However as I mentioned above I believe this to be a very worthy production that will hopefully spawn more Rankin adaptions with less Spaniel involvement
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