A Morse Code message from a Christmas star leads Benny to Marlowe’s World – where you must be very, very careful what you wish for!
A Morse Code message from a Christmas star leads Benny to Marlowe’s World – where you must be very, very careful what you wish for!
The Heart’s Desire
I have a small problem with the Hearts Desire. The concept of the story is fine, and the unusual opening should lead into an interesting setup. Unfortunately it suffers from a key flaw that severely impeded my listening; it doesn’t contain a single likeable character. During the play it’s impossible to empathise with anyone during the play, and in fact even Bernice herself comes across as particularly brass and unlikeable at times, although given the stressful situation it’s understandable.
Conrad Westmass and Steven Bugdale pair off as a pair of mysterious onlookers, each toying with Bernice and plotting her journey through Marlowe’s world. Personally I found it a little hard to distinguish their characters at times, as they both similar roles albeit with very different motives. Particularly distinguishable though is Lucy Beresford as Ms Topsy Turvé, who despite having a dark secret uncovered later in the play, never seems anything more than loud and annoying.
Rather than slowly reveal the truth as the story goes on, the writers tease us with a pair of ominous figures debating Bernice’s progress and referring to their ‘secret’ without actually saying anything. The story struggles to move at all, instead forcing Bernice through a series of awful situations until she snaps and calls the writers bluff. How does she do that? Because the situation isn’t even remotely realistic. Duh!
Then three quarters through the play, something actually interesting happens as Bernice gets her ‘hearts desire’. She becomes ‘normal’, and starts to live a ‘normal’ life which involves baking iced buns and caring for her son. Apparently she has a secret desire to move straight into twentieth century suburbia. Unfortunately this ruse lasts no more than five minutes before we’re back to the previous status quo and the story rushes out explanations as if its only just realised it’s out of time.
I’m not familiar with the Eternals from previous Doctor Who, but I hope they were treated more intelligently than they were here. Sadly one of the most interesting ideas in the Hearts Desire are throwaway backstory (pulsar set to destroy collection) gets sum of two minutes audio time. It’s not bad, the actors are trying and the sound design is good (love the new theme tune, although I always think I’m listening to something set underwater, when will Big Finish get a license to do Stringray???) it’s just uninvolving, probably I think because I just didn’t care who got what they wanted. In a story like this, that is unforgivable.
5 / 10