BBC radio four to produce Welles's Heart of Darkness

[Wellesnet]

http://www.wellesnet.com/bbc-radio-4-to ... -darkness/

Originally written by Orson Welles in 1939, with the intention of him directing and starring as both Marlow and Kurtz, the screenplay for Heart Of Darkness proved to be too audacious and grandiose for RKO Studios. Adapted from Joseph Conrad's celebrated novel, it tells the story of a skipper who is hired to take a steam ship up the Congo River and encounters a terrifying evil. Forty years later it became the basis for Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now! and now James McAvoy stars and Jamie Lloyd directs the world premiere of the original screenplay.

[tadao]

Thanks for the alert on this! I didn't know it was coming, and felt that the BBC's perfunctory commemoration of the Welles anniversaries this year was underwhelming. I heard a short trailer for it this morning and without the forewarning I might well have fallen out of bed. James McAvoy was doing what seemed to me a solid American accent, others rate him highly but I've not previously been particularly enchanted with his screen persona. I thought him very good in Neverwhere on the radio a couple of years back.

I hope they have recorded the first person primer prologue that got me instantly hooked when reading the screenplay; it was a slight disappointment to me that the version performed by Brian Cox in 2012 didn't include it.

[Wich2]

>James McAvoy was doing what seemed to me a solid American accent<

He's done that several times in his career; check it in THE CONSPIRATOR.

-Craig

[Wellesnet]

Now on Youtube in three parts:
Part 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZkJoGJe_UI
Part 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPZrqfxbbq0
Part 3:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgHyTXEl9Pw

[Terry]

The Youtube links are dead, but for the time being it's here:

https://archive.org/details/HeartOfDarkness_201809