Sir: Martyn Harris, writing of The Camomile Lawn (14 March)
underesti- mates the expressive power of buttocks and bosoms. He seems to think that they appear so regularly on the box merely to distract the viewer from the banality of story and script and keep us all watching in the hope of further revelations. This is not so.
No self-respecting actor, of course, would dream of baring buttocks and/or bosoms unless it was artistically necessary to do so, but since the recent discovery of sex it is generally essential to the plot that many of the characters should reveal their hitherto private parts. This being so, the abler per- formers have learnt to express subtle shades of thought and feeling through the medium of boob and bum, to such an extent that some of them have almost for- gotten how to act with any other part of their bodies.
Nicholas le Prevost's bottom was a case in point. The right buttock suggested his carnal attachment to Calypso, the left one hinted at his awareness of her bitchery, while the crack down the middle brilliantly enacted the ambivalence of his feelings. This was acting of the highest order.
Ray Wilkinson
6 Kinber Close, Bath
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