Television
Full of plums
Peter Levi
Watching too much television may make one petulant, but life in August makes one tired and unambitious and an ideal viewer. Even the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 86 (BBC2) seemed attractive, because over 30 years that has become a more liberal and sensible institu- tion, or at least a more interesting exhibi- tion. But the programme was an opportun- ity lost. It was presented by a numbskull, a word which I hope is too offensive to be libellous. It was very high-minded, it liked gratuitously eccentric performers, and so presented them that one longed for the good old days in which they would have starved or been pelted to death by their pupils. It gloated over the hideous plans for an abomination of a hospital at Hast- ings, nastier than Nissen huts. When we were shown a nice Hockney, we could scarcely see it, but I suppose it was nice. The Royal Academy exhibition is a pud- ding full of plums nowadays, but no serious energy seemed to be involved in presenting it.
It is only August, but even sweet Jan Leeming could not mitigate the onset of football. On Saturday we had massive sports programmes for hours, but still in the early evening news we got a repeat of the scores, and some sadist told us with relish that the punishment would continue for 35 weeks. Still, the weather man seemed sober, and I was geared to The Montreux Rock Festival which followed on BBC1. This was very odd indeed, and unlike the rock music of our youth. The performers had jolly names like Wax and A-Ha. Few of them sang more than a series of three or four notes often repeated; it was wall to wall music, that mostly relied on an instrument called a synthesiser, like a chapel harmonium with a lot of tricks, which they played like a pub piano. To my regret, it lacked the mechanical nightingale to which Kant so strongly objected. The photography was agile, but the voices mostly warbling bathtime baritones. An American called Jackson looked like a more untalented Eisenhower. A-Ha are Norwegian and nine-year-olds love them. Blow Monkeys and Depeche, Mode are awful, and would not have lasted three minutes in a music hall. There were numer- ous Glaswegians, but what I liked was an American singing with Wax. In the coming week we shall get Frankie Goes to Holly- wood, a group who with any luck may smash up the stage.
Blandness is the enemy, in art as in class warfare. Therefore I watched a film about the National Theatre production of The Oresteia at Epidaurus (Channel 4). It began badly with pseudery and ignorance of various kinds, but with a lot of passion, most of it the pent-up passion, not about the play but about life, of Peter Hall and the translator Tony Harrison. Step by step the play itself came to embody this passion, and the result was unique. For those not carried away, the only person who made sense was Jocelyn Herbert, the designer, who spoke about two sentences of lucid brilliance. A charming and authoritative don was trundled out, but I felt that enthusiasm overcame him. As he is my friend, the argument will have to go on for years about whether Tony Harrison's translation was all right. It was built on alliteration and heavy rhymes, and certain- ly it was alive, even astounding, but I did not think it was right, though in thinking not I also thought I must be wrong. The cast were tuned into music by Harrison Birtwistle by means of electronic metro- nomes inside their masks or their heads, so that the three plays became a flat-toned oratorio. The actors did learn a lot about metre, which most actors never learn, but at the expense of other sound values.
I could scarcely bear to watch the per- formance itself, even on television, though I could see it would be thrilling in some ways, and Jocelyn Herbert's contribution was a triumph. Early in the film about the production, Peter Hall wondered where the people came from to an ancient play at Epidaurus, a question that is not un- answerable from unsophisticated books. His own audience was bourgeois Athenian, and the production was a triumph. It was a triumphant release of complex energies. What more can one wish for television? My stumps are drawn, let Wendy cope.
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