It has always seemed quite bewildering that Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited has an assured place in public affections while his infinitely richer, experimentally comic novel Vile Bodies has languished alongside on bookseller’s shelves. If you’re keen to read about some English toff’s homoerotic longings for his social underling, there are any number of sexually ambiguous aristo-obits in the Daily Telegraph detailing the life and times of Colonel Hufty-Tufty of the Cotswolds, known to his close friends as Bufty, and remembered with something less than fondness by the younger lads from his public school days.
At any rate, Vile Bodies has considerably more going for it than such sexually unfulfilled, upper-class twats. This caustic swipe at the decadent goings-on among English society types between the wars flits from one ghastly grotesque to another, replicating the dizzying effects of a night out in the 1930s with lords, ladies and elephant-toppling doses of cocaine, absinthe or whatever stimulant was in fashion that week. It may be the English Jazz Age, but this is less F. Scott Fitzgerald, more Jonathan Swift. Comedian Stephen Fry, who adapted and directed this production, has done a remarkable job in capturing Vile Bodies’ giddy, yet sneering spirit, even if some of the gags don’t work quite so well off the page 70-odd years later.
The plot runs thus – while all around him the titular bright young things are shocking their elders with their modern telephone-talking and gramophone-playing ways, Adam (a thoroughly likable Campbell Moore) just wishes to cobble together enough funds to marry gold-digger Nina (Mortimer). This proves exceedingly difficult as his novel
manuscript gets confiscated by customs, a fusty old military type makes off with his gambling winnings and his job as society spy is jeopardised by its utter lack of veracity. His party-loving friends aren’t much help either, as one by one they crash and burn only to seek refuge in ovens, sanitoriums and heaven help us, France.
It’s all dashed splendid fun, by Jove, with wonderful period dialogue (“How shame-making!” and “Do you mind terribly, awfully?” and the like) and wicked cameos from the great and good of the British thespian establishment. Senella Woolgar’s party animal dyke, John Mills’ elderly coke-moocher and Michael Sheen’s ludicrously camp dandy are particular delights, and surely Sheen’s handkerchief-waving exploits here proved impressive training for his recent turn as the spectacularly fey Tony Blair.
The only concievable faults relate to the source novel itself; its grandiose population and its tendency to dwell on the serotonin-depleted lows rather than the high times. Still, the style and brightness of the Bright Young Things shines through. Or as they put it – “Blissfully savage.”