MOLL FLANDERS

In her fictional autobiography, Moll Flanders passes through just about every option open to a woman of the eighteenth century: seamstress, aspiring individual, fallen woman, wife, mother, incest victim, thief, deportee to the American Colonies. Her story is written with breathless directness by Defoe and is read in an equally straightforward fashion by Janet Suzman. The literary conventions of the period required characters to explain their emotions in detail, and Suzman enters into the spirit of these extended explanations, adding depth to Defoe's clunky prose with her vivid tone and pacing. However, these passages create the production's only weakness: Some circumlocutions are extremely dated, and other explanations sound forced when read aloud. G.T.B.
(c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/MAY 04]