Theatre
Cop out
Mark Amory
WCPC (Half Moon) On the Rocks (Chichester) Wyre's Cross (Drill Hall and King's Head)
WCPC by Nigel Williams is a weirdly distorted mirror image of Operation Bad Apple and it is just as rotten to the corps of policemen who protect us from evil. This time the worm in the fruit is sex- ual rather than financial corruption. They are bent to a man. Simple, nice-looking, young PC Simon joins the vice squad and finds himself surrounded by vice. Shocking things are happening in public lavatories. His complaints are hushed up, each of his confidants turns out to be 'one of them'. All the jokes you can think up along the lines of 'penetrating the enemy' come in, and one I couldn't understand about 'bit neither carpet nor hairbrush'. An under- cover agent is reviewing a book on Judy Garland for Gay News. Simon grits his teeth and pluckily proclaims, 'There are honest coppers and I'm going to find one,' but soon Robert Stephens is patting his knee and asking him in an avuncular way if he has read A.E. Houseman. As a trap Simon dons a wedding dress wired for sound and manages to gasp out, 'I think you're wonderful, sir. I love you. I need your body.' The play takes a further step into fantasy when this forces all the police back into the dreaded Closet on the top floor, but they continually burst out again singing, YMCA, with some verve. Poor Simon is then stripped naked and, his but- tocks clenched, his whole back blushing, pushed in. There is only the one basic joke all evening and a wobbly patch in the se- cond act when a Message briefly halts the fun, but the cheerfully subversive mood conquers all. Having The innocent seeker after truth as a narrow-minded prig almost comes unstuck because you cannot help feeling sorry for him, but there is a generosity about it all that allows for that too. Stephens is splendid at bogus authority and evasion, Derek Thompson has en- joyable sceptical eyebrows. Not a master- piece perhaps, but with its tiled set and single sex cast it could make a West End counterbalance to Steaming. Chichester have opened their season, as last year, with a revival by a major dead dramatist. This time it is Shaw's On the Rocks and they have had bad luck. It con- cerns the Liberal prime minister of a coali- tion government struggling ineffectively with unemployment as the sound of rioting drifts in through the windows of Downing Street. Topicality, even prescience, must have seemed assured, and audiences love that. I have not heard the SDP mentioned in the theatre in the last six months without also hearing an appreciative chuckle. But there were remarks, too, about war ships and their possible uselessness and the news about the Sheffield had just broken. An au- dience that had applauded 'God Save the Queen' was uneasily silent. With no help from the real world it seemed like the sort of Shaw play that people who do not like Shaw plays think all Shaws plays are like: no action, 'clever' points of view but no commitment, no real people, no emotion but masses and masses of talk.
The time has been moved from 1933 to 1982 which is odd but not disastrous. Many of the jokes and thrusts have become chestnuts so that you are not amused but think 'Goodness were they really talking about Home Rule for Scotland and the im- portance of small businesses and nobody having actually read Karl Marx then too?' The speakers being contemporaries you know were created 50 years ago would rein- force the 'nothing's changed' feeling, if you believed in them a little more. Still, if Keith Michell seems more like an actor than a prime minister, are we in a position to say that is so impossible? He is playing a hollow man and is convincing as that, with authori- ty, reassuring charm and a particular skill with the weaker lines. There is no pausing for a laugh that does not come, no hint that one was ever hoped for. A mysterious lady, almost a ghost, was so impressive that I thought a star was being born until I recognised Jean Marsh, whom you remem- ber as Rose in Upstairs, Downstairs. The
production is handsome, most of the com- pany are excellent, it is not a disaster; but it is not much else either.
After peeing policemen and Shavian chat I tried feminist soap opera. My taste here is: Archers unbearable, especially Shula; initial enthusiasm for Dallas waning; still like to drop in on Coronation Street from time to time but ten minutes of Crossroads a month is enough. It must be hard to write and the mockery comes when the difficulties show. Two or three dramas have to be kept mov- ing but at different stages while the casual viewer must be given a chance to under- stand without the devotee being bored by endless recapitulation. People tend to call each other by name unnaturally often, to help identification. Wyre's Cross is a parody, closest to Coronation Street. Soon adulterous Jennifer was saying to her boy- scout lover, 'Darren, did you have a car ac- cident last Wednesday, I'm pregnant,' but elegant Vera, just back from the Costa del Sol, has hardly got going yet. In half an hour we also visited the pub, the launderette twice, had a little wisdom (`When you've got troubles of your own you tend to forget others'), heard nasty lit- tle hyperactive Melody being whisked away in the wrong bus and saw half a dozen com- mercials. If it does not yet deliver quite as much fun as it promises, half the pleasure comes from familiarity and there are three more instalments to come. If you miss one you may never catch up.
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