Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Rosie Baker, Paterson Joseph, Jeff Rawle, Tim Speyer, Dan Starkey, Matthew Steer, Tilly Vosburgh.
The final novella from one of Britain’s finest ever writers, Charles Dickens, is the subject of a twin release from Average Romp this festive eve, and alongside The Cricket On The Hearth, the adaption of The Haunted Man is one that has been lovingly restored to the consciousness of the public thanks to the writing of Eddie Robson and Jonathan Morris, and their Big Finish colleagues Lisa Bowerman and Howard Carter.
Whilst it is to be considered that the great man’s finest novels were still to come, A Tale Of Two Cities, Bleak House, and Great Expectations, the writer’s journey in the short form was sealed and finalised with the tale that should be looked upon as self-reflection, one that goes further than most in capturing the essence of the man as he reckons his success against that perhaps of personal failures, and weighs himself in the deficit and surplus columns of both human pride and its then sinful regrets.
A writer brings their own life to the page, weaving their own silences into the narrative, their words of praise as full stops, their reflection that they see in the mirror when they cross another person, and whilst there was arguably an immediacy of doubt as he writes an autobiographical fragment in the same year, his travels with his family to Switzerland and Paris opening his mind to other possibilities, that haunted man is very much the one driving the story.
It is to the absolute credit of the adaptors, the team, and the cast, which includes the ever insightful Dan Starkey, Paterson Joseph, and the fantastic Jeff Rawle, that this final ever Christmas story receives a high fortune of affect and edifying drama, the sense of the eternal shame of robbing people of their memories just to spite one’s own soul, and which raises a thrilling, quite pertinent question, can our mistakes and internal self-loathing ever replace the good that people may see in us.
Whilst the terror that awaits Ebeneezer Scrooge as his own past and futures come to haunt, to terrify, and ultimately redeem the scoundrel of A Christmas Carol, to the undaunted The Haunted Man stands out as a reminder not of our mortality, but of our own willingness to engage in self-destruction, to look in the mirror and loathe the image we see despite it perhaps being one that others know to be a gentle soul.
This is beauty of The Haunted Man, an hour of audio heaven framed for all time.
Ian D. Hall