Armitage minor character award (Sylvester)

Here are the results of the poll about Armitage’s best minor character voice in the Sylvester audiobook. The winners are:

For best minor character, female voice: Lady Sefton.

Commentary: As one of the commentators said, this is one of those voices where you hear very little of Armitage behind it. On the whole, by the time I’m about seven minutes into disc 1 of this audiobook I forget about Richard Armitage, but this is a particularly good example both of his capacity to disappear behind a voice, and of his typical style for elderly ladies: breathless. There’s also something really delightful about the characterization here — the panache with which he throws out the gossipy-ness of the elderly aristocratic lady toward the end of the cut is so convincing. This was the handsdown winner in this poll and I concur.

Full results:

For best minor character, male voice: John Keighley.

Commentary: Results in this poll were much more scattered. Although I relished all of these voicings, Keighley was not my choice. I think it’s an excellent performance, and it has the advantage of capitalizing on Armitage’s preference for “the Northern” or at least the non-London, and holding him in the slightly deeper range of his vocal register than his normal speaking voice, which always produces a spine-tingling effect on me. I personally voted for Nugent Fotherby just because, again, it was characterized with such a marked contrast to the other voices, and it made me laugh out loud when I heard it.

Full results below:

~ by Servetus on August 31, 2011.