The sixties/seventies were the golden era of British drama. Faded though the picture quality may be, the plays stand the test of time and show up all the vapid 'drama' series we get on TV nowadays. Unfortunately BBC wiped many of these dramas because television wasn't seen as being of cultural value. Had they been watching TV now, they'd probably be right.
Now the rant's out of the way, here's a play. A screenplay/television play/drama, whatever you want to call it. I shall call it a play because I'm too lazy to make distinctions.
Looking through the catalogue of Play For Todays, the dominant style and plot is depressing kitchen sink drama full of lonely pathetic people and social taboo. The title is a bit confusing- it comes from a poem by Frances Cornford, 'To a Fat Lady seen from the Train':
O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?
O fat white woman whom nobody loves
Why do you walk through the fields in gloves
When the grass is as soft as the breast of doves
And shivering sweet to the touch?
The woman in question here is the lonely and pathetic Mrs Digby-Hunter (Maureen Pryor), the wife of an outwardly charming headmaster (Peter Jeffrey) who runs his school like a prison camp. When one of the pupils dies due to being violently hit by the headmaster, Mrs Digby-Hunter is forced to confront his sadism.
It's a heartbreaking play. The headmaster, a former major, has some mad tendencies, such as placing the boys' beds by their desks so that they are constantly in the mindset for education, but he's not a ridiculous figure. Jeffrey plays him as a man who has the military discipline engrained in him to the point where he is incapable of compassion. The odd thing is that the major believes that he is compassionate in his focus on turning one of the boys, Wragget (William Relton, whose portrayal made me a little bit teary) into a model Etonian, who will one day find a pretty girl "and [he] will say 'That's the girl for me!'
This links to another element to the major's frustration; everybody else finds his wife frumpy and overly doting. You can't really blame them until a powerfully raw monologue (excellent writing by William Trevor) in which Mrs Digby-Hunter reveals that her husband refused to sleep with her on their honeymoon because he was too repelled by her body. The wonderful thing about this era of drama is that writers were willing to take on socially awkward topics and to write female parts that weren't flattering. Pryor plays the sexual frustration brilliantly, defying the audience's initial impression that all she wants in life is to pick flowers.
Apart from the fact that Pryor seems more tubby rather than fat (seventies standards!), this is a play that despite depicting a school culture that is of a bygone era, it resonates deeply. It also has enough drama to keep it from being the misery fest it could have been. Check it out.
Now the rant's out of the way, here's a play. A screenplay/television play/drama, whatever you want to call it. I shall call it a play because I'm too lazy to make distinctions.
Looking through the catalogue of Play For Todays, the dominant style and plot is depressing kitchen sink drama full of lonely pathetic people and social taboo. The title is a bit confusing- it comes from a poem by Frances Cornford, 'To a Fat Lady seen from the Train':
O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?
O fat white woman whom nobody loves
Why do you walk through the fields in gloves
When the grass is as soft as the breast of doves
And shivering sweet to the touch?
The woman in question here is the lonely and pathetic Mrs Digby-Hunter (Maureen Pryor), the wife of an outwardly charming headmaster (Peter Jeffrey) who runs his school like a prison camp. When one of the pupils dies due to being violently hit by the headmaster, Mrs Digby-Hunter is forced to confront his sadism.
It's a heartbreaking play. The headmaster, a former major, has some mad tendencies, such as placing the boys' beds by their desks so that they are constantly in the mindset for education, but he's not a ridiculous figure. Jeffrey plays him as a man who has the military discipline engrained in him to the point where he is incapable of compassion. The odd thing is that the major believes that he is compassionate in his focus on turning one of the boys, Wragget (William Relton, whose portrayal made me a little bit teary) into a model Etonian, who will one day find a pretty girl "and [he] will say 'That's the girl for me!'
This links to another element to the major's frustration; everybody else finds his wife frumpy and overly doting. You can't really blame them until a powerfully raw monologue (excellent writing by William Trevor) in which Mrs Digby-Hunter reveals that her husband refused to sleep with her on their honeymoon because he was too repelled by her body. The wonderful thing about this era of drama is that writers were willing to take on socially awkward topics and to write female parts that weren't flattering. Pryor plays the sexual frustration brilliantly, defying the audience's initial impression that all she wants in life is to pick flowers.
Apart from the fact that Pryor seems more tubby rather than fat (seventies standards!), this is a play that despite depicting a school culture that is of a bygone era, it resonates deeply. It also has enough drama to keep it from being the misery fest it could have been. Check it out.
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