Well, before
setting out to watch this I was beginning to think that I might have
been wrong in believing no one could make a worse production than the 2000
version, mostly because I couldn't concieve of Billie Piper
being any good in the
part of Fanny Price and for the first half hour, I was preparing to admit
that the impossible had been achived. Within 20 minutes, we had skipped
the whole of the first part of the novel and jumped to the
dramatics. Rushworth's courting was left out as was the Honourable
Yates... It seemed that by ommitting the whole of the beginning of the
novel, the scriptwriter had failed to adequately draw out the
characters of the cast and this was certainly true throughout for the
characters of Julia and Maria, but on the whole, the script redeemed
itself and did manage to flesh out the the personalities adequately. What was interesting was that this production was developed, convincingly I might add, as a single set piece. All of the events were staged in one place: Mansfield Park and this I believe contributed an added focus to the events of the novel. The script was so well worked that with only a little variation, it would make an ideal version for the stage.
The only weak link in this version was Billie Piper, who did not adequately exhibit the humbleness beaten into Fanny by the evil Aunt Norris. Her working-class hair-do from Portsmouth would certainly not have been allowed to have been worn amongst the gentility of Mansfield Park, even if she was considered as nothing more than Aunt Norris's unpaid skivvy. Her heaving bosom seemed more designed to attract male teenage viewers than to represent the slight-figured Fanny. That said, her acting performance was solid piece of workmanship.