Voices under the Sun 陽光下的聲音

While browsing for e-audiobooks via Libby – the OverDrive mobile app that allows users to access library services – this reviewer discovered the BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of The Exorcist, the renowned 1971 horror novel by American author William Peter Blatty.

The audio drama was broadcast on two consecutive nights in February 2014. According to The Guardian, it was promised to be “just as scary as the [book’s film adaptation] that caused widespread controversy in America and Britain when it was first released in 1973”.

For those (very few?) readers who have neither read the novel nor watched the film, the story is about a young girl named Regan and her possession by a demon. Her mother Chris asks Father Karras to perform an exorcism, but he is in a crisis of faith, tormented by his failure to fully devote to the Church and to care for his ailing mother.

In the story, when the exorcism is performed, it is led by Father Merrin – a senior priest who has perviously performed the ritual in Africa – with Father Karras’s assistance. Also thrown into the mix is police investigation of the violence death of a movie director near the MacNeil residence, led by Detective Kinderman.

As is often the case, various differences are found between the novel and its film adaptation. However, for those who are new to the scene, the BBC Radio 4 dramatisation offers an excellent entry point to the world of The Exorcist.

To start with, the audio drama focuses on telling a good story using only words and sounds. Without the aid of a narrator – as this is not an ordinary audiobook – the listener relies on a careful and clever combination of dialogues and background noises to understand the characters and their journeys, as well as how they interact with each other while responding to specific aspects of their surroundings.

This allows the listener to not just be told what is happening, but to immerse themselves in the story and experience the plot as it unfolds. We hear the highly stressed Chris begging for help, desperately trying to understand the violent changes her little girl is going through. We also hear Kinderman’s undisguised cynicism and Father Karras’s emotional turmoil, which makes Regan’s sweet, innocent voice particularly soothing.

So it is both shocking and confronting when we hear the demon’s voice – not just the sort of raspy, croaky gibberish that one might expect, but predominantly a sickeningly syrupy spiel with cadence of speech and a precocity that belies the girl’s age. The eerie voice is alluring and offensive at once, at times sharp and threatening but more than often pervasive and persuasive. In the words of producer and director Gaynor Macfarlane: “You feel tainted by hearing it.”

Macfarlane further elaborated: “In the film the demon is very foul-mouthed, but we have changed that so it is not just a ranting presence, but something really frightening, witty and knowing instead. It gets right inside Karras’s head.” Meanwhile, playwright Robert Forrest described the voice as a “sneering, merciless creature constantly whispering”.

To this reviewer, the other exceptional part of the audio drama is the final confrontation between the demon (voiced by Alexandra Mathie) and Fathers Merrin and Karras (voiced by Ian McDiarmid and Robert Glenister, respectively). The whole segment sounds unnervingly chaotic, as can be expected, but the impressive psychological battle between the two sides sheds considerable light on Karras’s doubts.

At one stage, Father Karras asks: “A village in Nigeria. A 12-year-old girl in Georgetown. Why? What’s the purpose of it?” Father Merrin’s response to this question is the true gem of the audio drama, which is perhaps also the major message of Blatty’s book. This reviewer would highly recommend that readers give this production a try, whether they are emerging or established fans of The Exorcist.