THE DIVINE COMEDY

Very nice review in The Radio Times:

THE DIVINE COMEDY

Review by:

Jane Anderson

It’s a brave writer who dares to take on Dante’s epic three-part poem The Divine Comedy. Playwright Stephen Wyatt, who has steered a radical course with this version, follows in the footsteps of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dorothy L Sayers and, most recently, Clive James, who have all written of the difficulties they faced in achieving a decent, scholarly translation.

So, if literary heavyweights like Longfellow, Sayers and James have struggled, how has Wyatt fared in turning it into a listener-friendly piece of radio?

He’s done a remarkable job. Out go the cantos and rigid rhyming structures. In comes a flowing narrative that loses none of the evocative imagery of the original. And it does Wyatt’s case no harm that the three central characters — Dante the younger, Dante the elder and Virgil, his ghostly omnipresent guide through hell, purgatory and paradise — are played by Blake Ritson, John Hurt and David Warner.