Does your mind get clouded sometimes? All clouded up…
Adopts film trailer baritone: In a world in which social
security is on the verge of collapse, centuries old religious bigotry defines
our boundaries and government is undermined by self-seeking cynicism… and
that’s just the first three plays on this vibrant new set that are as relevant
today as they ever were.
I was just turned ten years old when the family watched Edna
the Inebriate Woman and I still remember the reaction from my parents, the
debate and the agreement that things were not right. Even as a child I knew
what were called “tramps”, people, mostly men, who were wrapped in huge coats
who’d walk from Liverpool up and down as far as Preston in one case, eking out
a living, finding shelter where they could. It was part of the everyday and,
whilst it seemed almost romantic to younger eyes, this play removed all idea
of a life on the open road being anything other than hand-to-mouth rough.
With this play and others on the BFI’s stunning box sets,
you wonder how much of a part the Play for Today series had on forming my
opinions and politicizing the nation. Sure, a decade of such plays preceded the
victory of Thatcher, but people were still more aware of society’s problems,
just differing in their view of what needed to be done. The legacy of these
plays is, perhaps, not a purely political one but in raising awareness and developing
consensus around the faults in our society. That these persist, is undeniable
and Brexit, no matter how misguided some of us may feel, was in many ways, an
attempt to reach for a bigger solution to problems we all of us accept.
 |
| Patricia Hayes |
Edna the Inebriate Woman by Jeremy Sandford
First broadcast 21st October 1971
Jeremy Sandford, who co-wrote Cathy Come Home (1966)
with its director, Ken Loach, slept rough for two weeks in preparation for writing
this play and at times it feels as though the dialogue has come straight from
the road. The narrative is far from straightforward and we feel the same
dislocation and confusion as Edna does as she searches for support and the home
she has barely known. As Sandford later noted: “…the style of ‘Edna’ is
intended to be impressionistic since I aimed to represent the world as seen
through Edna’s disorientated perceptions…”
As Katie Crosson notes in her excellent booklet essay – the quality
of these has been exemplary – the play is very didactive in addition to being authentic,
funny and heart-wrenching, but Sandford had a point to make and an hour and a
half was barely scratching the surface. Edna is an example, one of so many who
fell through the cracks at a time when were less sophisticated, more
judgemental, in the response to traumatic vagrancy. Then as with I am Daniel
Blake in 2016, some critics probably felt the scenarios were “unrealistic”
but having been through modern PIP assessments for my son, the bureaucracy of “care”
is seemingly indifferent to actual fact.
What is without question is the sheer excellence of Patricia
Hayes performance as Edna, making light of the grotesquery injecting fierceness
and spirit into a character that would be hard to love. Edna is aggressive,
constantly rude, often inebriated – drinking turpentine – and unreasonable in
the face of authority and the terrifying certainty that she is, as she always
has been, alone and unloved. Later in the play we find out what made her so and
we can appreciate that she has to fight when there is simply no reason to trust.
Edna is also funny and she is also wise, there is just a glimpse of the role
she could play in helping others when she walks with Teresa (Kate Williams) a
young woman on the start of a similar path.
Edna’s restless journey must forever continue though, flitting,
as she says, always flitting and the play has a large cast reflecting the
journey from roadside to battles for income support, a bed for the night and a
system that presents prison as the better option. At one point Edna is put in a
mental hospital where she is drugged and given involuntary electric shock
treatment despite not having a mental illness… the things that could happen if
not necessarily did happen. The dosshouse in Blackfriars Road, grim as it
looks, was an actual dosshouse whilst Edna’s refuge at the Jesus Saves home, is
an ideal of the kind of tolerant support she needed and even this is taken away
as local residents’ complaints force it to close. Care in the community…
Sandford later chaired the National Homelessness Alliance
and worked on many projects both on and off screen to tackle the issues of this
play and, as Katie Crosson notes his legacy is measured not by Edna
alone, but in his wider contribution to the causes. For this play alone, this
box set is worth your time and money.
 |
| The band march down "Fenian Alley" |
Just Another Saturday by Peter McDougall
First broadcast 13 March 1975
I was ordered to stand at the brother’s command, To receive the bright orange and blue...
To Glasgow and the continuing celebration of King William
III’s victory at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690… I remember an Orange Day walk
in Liverpool as a child, still England’s most Catholic city, the sectarian divide
was real enough with separate schools if not strictly separated communities. It
took me years, for instance, to realise that the King Billy painted in big
white capitals on a wall in Walton near my grandparents, wasn’t just some local
scally with a spray can. Far different in Glasgow though, where the first
Catholic to play for Rangers wasn’t until 1989.
Football is the entre to this play’s sectarian divide as we
open with seventeen-year-old John (John Morrison) waking up in his bedroom with
a Rangers FC poster on the wall next to a No Surrender rosette. John is the “stick
swinger”, the mace thrower who will lead Muirhill Flute Band who today will
join with many others to celebrate the victory of the Dutch protestant king
over the deposed catholic King James II of England and Ireland, VII of Scotland.
John’s nervous but sings the words of Orange Order songs as
he prepares to join a ritual he does not entirely understand. Directed by John
Mackenzie, there are superb scenes of the marches around which part of the play
were filmed and with which the writer, Peter McDougall used to walk as a
teenager like John. The two collaborated on The Elephants’ Graveyard (1976) and
Just a Boys’ Game (1979), both of which have already been included on the BFI’s
PFT box sets but this was McDougall’s first script and one that was deemed too
incendiary in the early part of the decade.
The words presage the violence that will erupt during the march when the band leader Rab (Ken Hutchison) leads them through “Fenian Alley” and as the Irish flags hang angrily form windows the two sides come to blows. John is shaken and disgusted by what he sees, are these folk not as Scottish as he after all. Later he shares a drink with catholic mates including Paddy (Billy Connolly) when the brother of one of the injured Catholics comes looking for revenge. Will the cycle ever be broken?
The play packs a visceral punch and we only have to look
across the water to see how easily hatred still stirs.
Adrienne Posta
Bar Mitzvah Boy by Jack Rosenthal
First broadcast 14 September 1976
Jack Rosenthal’s play
is rich with characters from his Jewish heritage. It’s
another clash of modern sensibilities versus centuries old tradition told with
a lighter touch than Saturday, so much humour even as our hero Elliot –
a superb turn from 14-year-old Jeremy Steyn – does the unthinkable. Director
Michael Tuchner, brings out the best in an excellent cast and this just may be
the best performance I’ve seen from Adrienne Posta who is so calmly centred as
Elliot’s older sister and the smartest person in the room, hotel reception or
the synagogue, where she allowed to attend at this point in time…
The pressure is on for Elliot as his, and more importantly,
his parents’ big day approaches. He has to learn his speech and the recital from
the Torah, but his mother Rita (Maria Charles) must get her hair right and his
father Victor (Bernard Spear) lazily expects this right of passage to confirm
his own manhood. This latter point is the problem for Elliot as not only is he
not convinced that he is about to become as man, he’s not sure his role models
are either… His grandfather Wax (Cyril Shaps) and potential brother-in-law,
Harold (Jonathan Lynn, a legendary writer in his own right) are both overly
sentimental and wimpish, especially when measured against the forceful women.
Dr Julia Wagner’s booklet essay explains the play’s
impact in portraying Jewish culture and the skill of Tuchner’s direction and
Rosenthal’s words in enabling the play to overcome potential stereotyping just
as it creates a surprisingly intense family drama with only Lesley and Elliot
keeping their heads in the Green’s sitting room as all around are losing theirs’.
 |
| Thora Hird not suffering fools... |
The Mayor’s Charity by Henry Livings
First broadcast 29 November 1977
And so, to the legend that is Thora Hird in this heavily spiked
comedy of Machiavellian local governmental manners. Livings’ script is a gift
to Thora and the likes of Frank Windsor as the ambitious Ex-W/O Higham, Terence
Rigby, the old school manipulator Mr Brabazon and Roy Kinnear as Roderick
Major, the brother-in-law of Thora’s Olive major, the newly appointed mayor.
Director Mike Newell moves the plot forward at speed and there’s a lot of
detailed plotting, both in and around the play as Higham looks to sweep all
before him by playing off different factions after being Olive’s choice as Mace
Bearer, a master of ceremonies.
Some of the humour is broad, with a farcical French visit
then a NSFW Scottish cabaret singer but there’s a serious point about local politics
at a time of unrest in the year of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. There’s a union
dispute to deal with and petty politicking from people who ought to put their
constituents first; as Higham cries out what about service?! Some folk
are only in it for themselves whilst most feather their own nests… plus ca
change eh Thora?
The Portrait of Nigel Havers...
Coming Out by James Andrew Hall
First broadcast 10 April 1979
“Nigel Havers… father was the attorney general at the
time and was really upset that his son was appearing in this TV play which
garnered all these headlines in the papers like 'Gay sex shocker' and things
like that…” James Andrew Hall, Bournemouth Echo, 2017
Directed by Carol Wiseman, Coming Out is not quite
the tentative closeted story you might expect form its vintage, the main characters
are completely secure in their sexuality and the debate is more about whether
that should be a matter of public record. Anton Rodgers plays Lewis Duncan, a
hugely successful writer of very macho detective fiction who is living with his
younger lover, Richie (Nigel Havers) just not in an open way. He doesn’t consider
his sexual preference to be big news although is well aware that it might
damage his marketability.
He writes a sensational magazine column under the pen name of Zippy Grimes, suggesting that homosexual encounters are more prevalent than society allows, he receives a flood of confessional letters from a pained populace still hiding its secrets. His publisher Harry (Hywel Bennett) is ecstatic and encourages him to meet with some of the respondents and reluctantly he does with a number of vignettes exposing the sadness of seventies repression. But he won’t revisit his Zippy persona…
Cue the dinner party from Hell with his painter friend Gunnar
(Michael Byrne) and his belligerent other half Gerald (Richard Pearson) who relishes
the chance to challenge Lewis’ complacency with all the means at his disposal
not forgetting his own struggles having survived the era of illegality with the
blackmail and suicides that went with it. There are home truths and a betrayal
that will any of this change Lewis’ position?
Archie Pool, T-Bone Wilson and Trevor Thomas
A Hole in Babylon by Jim Hawkins and Horace Ové
First broadcast 29 November 1979
Last, but not least, is a play based on the 1975 Spaghetti
House siege that took place in Knightsbridge, London. Three black gunmen
attempted to rob the restaurant late at night after being tipped off that some
£40,000 of takings would be on the premises. One of the workers escaped to
alert the police leaving the men to hold the rest hostage from 28th
September to 3rd October. During that time the event became
politicised as the men claimed to be acting on behalf of Black Liberation
organisations.
Directed by Horace Ové, from a script he co-wrote with Jim Hawkins, the play attempts to examine how the three men ended up in the raid as well as detailing the course of the hostage situation. T-Bone Wilson plays Frank Davies the leader of the group, an apparent recidivist offender who may well be more sinned against than sinning. Then there’s a university drop out with a dream to teach black kids, Bonsu Monroe (Trevor Thomas), and Wes Dick (Archie Pool) a would be poet.
Ové’s flashbacks of their lives was based on interviews conducted for over a year with the main protagonists and the black community of Ladbroke Grove especially. The result gives the men their due and, to the horror of The Daily Mail, cast doubt on the official version of events and the idea that the political elements were just an attempt to change the nature if the crime. Who can say for sure but there is so much room for doubt given the structural issues confronting men forced into this kind of risk?
In his booklet essay, film writer Kaleem Aftab, puts it more
authoritatively than I can: By using Jamaican patois in the title, Babylon
being not just the police but the white establishment, Ové knew what he was up
against, and in many ways, still is.
Perhaps the hardest hitting of the BFI’s Play for Today volumes,
you can pre-order Play for Today Volume 3 direct from the BFI shop, in
person or online. It’s out on 11th April and is an absolute delight!
Rated: ***** and with much gratitude; these releases
continue to be essential.
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