" A play which portrays Labour Ministers as willing to
win votes at the price of imperilling national security cannot be excused by the label ' comedy,' " observed the Daily Herald in an apoplectic review of Mr. Val Gielgud's Party Manners, which was televised on Sunday. " Reeked with snobbishness " . . . . " the irresponsibility of the cen- tral theme " . . . . " all the more deplorable." Mr. Gielgud was reprimanded in the tone of horrified indignation reserved by the Moscow Literary Gazette for the more hyena- like deviationists. It would, of course, be possible to scramble on to an equally high horse and denounce the Daily Herald for advocating a measure of political censorship, which is in effect what it does when it demands that the repeat perform- ance of Party Manners, announced for Thursday, should be cancelled. But it seems more profitable to examine the logical outcome of the paper's insistence that no character in a play should ever be shewn as possessing, simultaneously, low motives and Labour sympathies. It would make the writing of modern comedies—even if, like Mr. Gielgud's, they were of the farcical sort—rather more difficult than it is at present, and the audiences might get bored with imaginary worlds in which all the knaves and fools were Conservatives or Liberals or Communists.
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