Practicalmadness

"It's Death! I can hear it squeaking!"
"Headmaster Death!"
"de Ath, man! Show some respect!"

Jenny bought me the DVD of Gormenghast, the epic BBC miniseries of Mervyn Peake's little-known literary classic, here reduced (or embiggened, depending on how you look at it) to something a little less The Mists of Avalon and more The League of Gentlemen. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Jonathan Rhys-Meyers stars as the "dangerous and charming kitchen boy" Steerpike, who -- through a series of manipulations and ruthless assassinations -- rises from Richard Griffiths's kitchen/boudoir to the heights of power in the House of Groan (yes, Groan). His only threat comes from Titus (Andrew Robertson), the 77th Earl of Groan, who has succeeded his father, the dotty patriarch Sepulchrave Groan (Ian Richardson, not much better known as the alien leader in Dark City), only to find himself trapped squarely inside a small plastic box marked "sullen teenage archetype, 2 for $1". (Oops, sorry -- make that £1.)

Standing by going very dramatically insane are Titus's mother Lady Gertrude (ably played by fifty pounds -- I mean dollars -- of foam rubber and Celia Imrie), who talks to birds, and his sister Lady Fuchsia (Neve McIntosh), who has the unfortunate burden of being in love with Steerpike.

("What's unfortunate?" says Jenny. "He's cuuuute.")

Not that Titus is problem-free himself -- he's in love with the Wild Girl, who is his sister only in the sense that her mother was Titus's wet nurse. Oh, and there's the twins -- Ladies Cora and Clarice (Lynsey Baxter, Zoe Wanamaker) who have enough brainpower between them to find their way out of a paper bag, but after that, pffft.

Gormenghast is populated by a host (yes, a host!) of wacky supporting characters who inhabit the titular megacastle, from Flay, the terse manservant (Christopher Lee. [sound of crickets chirping] Um, Saruman? [murmurs of recognition]), the loquacious Dr. Prunesquallor (John Sessions) and his under-sexed sister Irma (Fiona Shaw), Nanny Slagg and a gaggle of schoolteachers living under the yoke of the frightfully senile Headmaster De Ath and led (grudgingly) by narcoleptic Professor Bellgrove (Stephen Fry).

My favorite scene is the one where Professor Mule (Steve Pemberton, one of the League of Gentlemen) is presented to Irma Prunesquallor, and upon seeing a woman for the first time in many, many years, reverts to his three favorite words ("Bloody...booger...bastard!") then collapses into a "full spasm". As Irma romances Bellgrove in the garden, Dr. Prunesquallor decides that the best therapy for the unconscious Mule is to cut away his clothes and gently tap his spine with a mallet.

Next thing we know, Mule is running out of the house and through the garden screaming, sending Irma -- a woman who has been without the company of men for many a year -- into her own screaming fit. It's funny. Isn't it? Isn't it?

I guess you had to have been there.