Overprivileged Nightmare
WITHIN the past. few days, television has shown us two great plays. ITV did Chekhov's Seagull and the BBC The Tempest. I suppose we ought to be grateful. Here is the BBC at its do-good best, sneaking culture into the bookless lounges of Subtopia, and here—glory be!—is No Good Boyo ITV come to the penitent bench for ninety long minutes.
Vet I find the effect depressing. I want to form a Society for the Protection of Master- pieces from Television The medium is just enough for the best. It can only ► e greatness of a great play. It cannot full range of talents of great actors. Shakespeare on the stage, read him, him on the radio, but keep him off 'vision screen.
4e asked several intelligent people how at on with The Tempest. Not one stayed to the end. Chekhov is easier to present. orks more in miniature and calls for refined acting. But it is difficult to id disbelief in a living-room where the .eeds mending, the dog is restless, the one rings and the unread books mutely owerfully reproach.
1, there must be several million people
aave never before been within fifty miles production of Chekhov. It is hard socially overprivileged journalist to :late what television means to the socially nivileged. Each night they collect an ,ping bag of celebrities.. Within three last Friday, for example, they could see Adler, Arthur Askey, Antonio, Yvonne d, Jack Payne, Tom Arnold, Sir Edward d, Mr. Macmillan, Mr. Macleod and Sutler. Entertainment, science, politics. cience, by the way, was fascinating even non-scientific viewer. It seems that the dents with the new blue whitener do wash whiter than they did or soaps still
do.
The show I enjoyed most was given by Norman Evans, the Lancashire comedian. He is a character comedian and the only one, I think, who plays pantomime dame parts the whole year round. His show on Saturday night was set in the old burlesque tradition with a messy kitchen scene and a bedroom sketch that must be as old as Chaucer. But they are still wildly funny. It is a pity that comedians of Evans's kind are so few today. They are splendid on television.
Askey did a brilliant ten minutes in the new series The ABC of Show Business. He is not a character comedian. He is a clown; an excellent clown but not a great one because he has no touch of pathos. I recommend Zoo Quest to all viewers who, like me, were brought up on missionaries' lantern lectures. David Attenborough has something of Chataway's engaging ingenuousness, which may be artless- ness concealing art.
JOHN BEAVAN
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