bobod
Chancellery Guard
Likes: 2,759 
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Post by bobod on Mar 30, 2016 18:46:42 GMT
Jenny Collins was once a beautiful singer, married into a rich family. Now she lives locked in a tower at Collinwood. Her husband has left her, her children have been taken away, and the horror and isolation have driven her mad. The only person she ever sees is Beth, the maid who brings her food. Together they play a game – recreating the past, reliving everything that poor mad Jenny lost. They’ve played the game before... but tonight something’s different. Tonight, something’s got into the game...
Written by James Goss
. Directed by Stuart Manning
Starring Marie Wallace as Jenny Collins and Terry Crawford as Beth Chavez.
I listened to this for the first time today. (Which I think means I've heard all the audios apart from Angelique's Descent now.)
A lot of lovely stuff in there for Marie and Terry to do. Including playing Jenny and Beth (obviously), Quentin, Judith, Laura and Magda. It was nice to hear Terry Crawford getting the chance to do something - Beth isn't a stretching part in the TV show.
As I'm fangs deep in 1897 at the moment (as I type this I can see Barnabas battering Wolf-Quentin with his cane as Edward looks on) it was great to get a bit more background/depth on Jenny and hear Marie getting stuck in.
Really nice poetic character stuff. Though I still kind of look at the early stuff from Stuart's time as being lots of lovely character work but often forgetting to have a driving plot of its own. I sometimes think 'well that was sweet - but what was it?'
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Post by silverednickle on Mar 31, 2016 16:01:17 GMT
Poor Jenny Collins, the first of Quentin's many lovers and victims. Both characters were sort of one bit (Marie had fun being crazy and singing and Beth was a silent servant). It is lovely that they were able to be fleshed out a bit more and hearing them play the roles of many other characters in a believable manner. In many ways, I had always wanted a Jenny Collins when Big Finish started, but this tale was so tragic that it was sort of a "be careful what you wish for." While I do agree that it's more character than plot, it's sort of hard to do to much with a crazy woman locked up in the Tower Room.
I'm glad that Marie has come back to reprise a couple of her roles and seems fairly established now as Jessica Griffin. Terry Crawford has been great in her reprisals as well, but seems less involved with Dark Shadows these days.
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Post by Trace on Apr 1, 2016 1:10:28 GMT
I agree that the early ones are more character-driven than plot-driven, but actually the character-driven soap opera format has proven to garner the best ratings, if not the most vocal supporters. Example: "The Young & the Restless" has been the number 1 soap for some 30 years or more, skews an older audience, and it's always gone with the character-driven format. "Days of Our Lives" on the other hand, is a plot-driven soap. It has the most vocal followers, and a young demographic audience, but is constantly at the bottom of the ratings race.
Just some interesting stats.
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Post by elkawho on Apr 1, 2016 3:03:49 GMT
I really like this one. It was one of the first DS audios I listened to and I thought it was extremely disturbing.
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Post by barnabaslives on Apr 1, 2016 18:04:38 GMT
I'm glad to hear that this audio has some general appeal. I was sort of afraid it might take being really sentimental over the characters as seen on the OS to really get into this one. I thought it was a very good story though, so hopefully it does speak to people.
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Post by omega on Apr 1, 2016 21:27:20 GMT
I agree that the early ones are more character-driven than plot-driven, but actually the character-driven soap opera format has proven to garner the best ratings, if not the most vocal supporters. Example: "The Young & the Restless" has been the number 1 soap for some 30 years or more, skews an older audience, and it's always gone with the character-driven format. "Days of Our Lives" on the other hand, is a plot-driven soap. It has the most vocal followers, and a young demographic audience, but is constantly at the bottom of the ratings race. Just some interesting stats. For the DS audios it's a good way to see how the characters tick as well as deliver backstory that the TV episodes may or may not have touched on, allowing people who don't know about their histories to catch up. Often it's the characters people tend to remember over the plotlines, although Dark Shadows was sufficiently different to stand out from other soaps (seances, time travel, Frankenstein's Monster and vampires only scratch the surface). |
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Post by Trace on Apr 2, 2016 4:54:06 GMT
I agree that the early ones are more character-driven than plot-driven, but actually the character-driven soap opera format has proven to garner the best ratings, if not the most vocal supporters. Example: "The Young & the Restless" has been the number 1 soap for some 30 years or more, skews an older audience, and it's always gone with the character-driven format. "Days of Our Lives" on the other hand, is a plot-driven soap. It has the most vocal followers, and a young demographic audience, but is constantly at the bottom of the ratings race. Just some interesting stats. For the DS audios it's a good way to see how the characters tick as well as deliver backstory that the TV episodes may or may not have touched on, allowing people who don't know about their histories to catch up. Often it's the characters people tend to remember over the plotlines, although Dark Shadows was sufficiently different to stand out from other soaps (seances, time travel, Frankenstein's Monster and vampires only scratch the surface). All very true--and you make a very good point here. DS was a stand-out, and the first of its kind (at least in the soap genre.) It did the outrageous plot stuff LONG before Luke and Laura stopped Mikkos Cassadine from freezing the world and decades before Satan possessed Dr. Marlena Brady. |
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