RTDA: The Entertainer by John Osbourne presented by the BBC.

So this week my new mp3 player arrived and after spending a good few hours organising my music collection, the shows and soundtrack folder is jam packed, I started looking at my spoken word resources. Here in the UK we may have the best broadcasting organisation in the world with the BBC as they put on so many great productions and programmes both on the television and their various radio stations. Over the years I have recorded and collected a wide range of plays and programmes on the theatre always with it in mind to listen to them, much like my issues with my book collection, but now I have actually put a selection onto my mp3 with the idea of listening while I work. This week I put on a couple of programmes and plays but the big one that I had was a BBC Worldwide production of 'The Entertainer' by John Osbourne featuring Bill Nighy as Archie Rice the main character. I once tried to read 'The Entertainer' because of having read 'Look Back in Anger' and loving the characters and I found it slightly hard to follow and not very compelling. I should probably add that this was when I was 17 and really had only just been introduced to work the likes of Pinter and Osbourne so I was learning slowly. Then around the beginning of December I was looking through one of my monologue books and came across one of the Archie Rice speeches and was hooked by his laid back malice. So when I put the play on I was hoping to enjoy the whole thing.

I worked and listened and found myself sucked into this family that just exists, much like Britain after WWII the rice family just exists. It doesn't prosper and it has no future according to its main protagonists. Nighy was brilliant as Archie playing him in the first three quarters with so much charm that I believed I had the character down all wrong, that I must have misheard and misread all the information I had found about the play. Then nearer the end he becomes nastier as it transpires he has fallen for some floozy and has no interest in his wife or family any longer. By the time he puts his elderly father back on the stage you hate Archie Rice and realise that he plays the role of genial gentleman and comic 24/7 even with his immediate family just so he can get what he wants from life. I found the play very interesting and entertaining as well. I look forward to listening to more BBC productions on BBC 7 in the coming weeks.

I recommend anyone who wants to experience some of the best actors in the UK playing some fantastic roles to go straight to the BBC Radio website and check out Radio 4 and Radio 7.

Brimstone and Treacle still vile after all these years

On Saturday we visited London once again and on a beautiful January day we headed for, what has become my favourite part of the City, the Southbank of the Thames. On the Southbank is situated the BFI and inside there is the Mediatheque which allows you to watch free movies from the BFI collection. Inside the archives at the BFI they have a large amount of the 'Play for Today' programmes, about 60 of the original 300 broadcast, of which I have now watched a couple. I really enjoyed the first one which was 'Brassneck' by David Hare and Howard Breton and when searching through the archive noticed 'Brimstone and Treacle' and I noted it down as a future watch. I knew about it being a banned play but I just assumed that it had been banned for a mild reason, in this multimedia world of disgusting images available at the touch of a button surely a play written in the mid 1970s couldn't offend. I was wrong.

Starring Denholm Elliott, Michael Kitchen, Patricia Lawrence and Michelle Newell this play focuses on the life of a tragedy struck family and how one stranger infiltrates and takes advantage of that family.

The play begins with Martin, who refers to himself as a Demon, (Kitchen) on a London suburb street talking about sulphur and looking around for a mark. He talks to a gentleman trying to insinuate himself into the mans life asking if he remembers him, this man doesn't and rebukes Martin who quickly moves onto Mr Bates (Elliott) who walks into view and gets sucked in slightly by Martin. Martin claims to know Mr Bates which makes him ask how and he claims to have known Mr Bates' daughter which makes Bates dubious as his daughter is paraplegic due to a tragic car accident two years previous. Martin claims to have proposed to the daughter but she turned him down so he went to America and had heard nothing about what had happened to her in the meantime but that he wants to see her again despite her being disabled. Mr Bates finds this most distasteful and tries to leave Martin but Martin fakes a seizure and Bates says he will fetch the car. Mr Bates leaves. Martin has stolen his wallet though and follows him home.

When Bates gets home we meet his wife who is looking after their daughter Pattie, a brilliant performance by Michelle Newell, and she is speaking to Pattie because she believes that her daughter will eventually get better. Mr Bates has already made up his mind that his daughter no longer exists and is just a physical shell despite the fact that when they talk to her she obviously responds. Martin turns up with the wallet and sends Mr Bates into a tizzy who is infuriated that the man he tried to lose followed him but stays polite and explains the situation to his wife who talks to Martin. Martin uses his natural charm to insinuate himself into Mrs Bates confidence and she accepts him as a would have been son in law nearly instantly. Mrs Bates is flattered by the attention that Martin gives her and of the chance that she has to actually converse with someone other than her husband as she has to stay at home and look after Pattie. During a session where the three of them drink a little too much and Martin allows himself to be spoken to we find out that Mr Bates has a problem with black people and believe the Conservative Party is now too soft so he has joined the National Front. As it gets late and Martin has volunteered to help look after Pattie because of his faux love of her since she turned down his proposal he is allowed to stay in Patties old bedroom upstairs. As soon as he gets up there he starts rummaging around her underwear drawer, finding some sort of perverse pleasure from the experience. This was the first thing that made me feel slightly uneasy. Then the perversion within this play comes out as he goes to bed and uses his demonic powers to sexually abuse and arouse Pattie who is sleeping downstairs.

The next day Pattie seems a little more responsive but Mr Bates is still unconvinced and Martin is treated badly by him again. When Mr Bates goes to work Martin convinces Mrs Bates to go get her hair cut and that he can look after Pattie whilst she is out. Once she has left the house Martin rapes Pattie in one of the most chilling and disturbing scenes I have ever witnessed on film.

The rape scenes in this play are disturbing not because of the content but because of the subject, this woman is the most helpless kind of person there is. Pattie is a woman who cannot say no, who cannot make a decision and she is fully exploited and violated by this demon. Then you add in the creepiness of the lines within the text which are wonderfully performed by Kitchen. Finally to really offend your sense of propriety and decency these rapes and molestations lead to Pattie coming to and being healed of her disability. It is a sick and twisted part of a play which actually brings up some very interesting points and makes you question the motives of this demon. My favourite part of this play is when the demon/Martin confronts Mr Bates with the reality of his racism, the reality of his 'send the blacks home' attitude. What starts as a simple conversation about how the NF will send them back to Africa/Jamaica/India etc leads to Martin bringing up the one fact that I like hearing racists and people like Nick Griffin try and answer which is 'What are people who are born here? Because according to you they are not British'. Martin goes on to point out that the only logical way to get rid of them is to have another Holocaust but here in England. This causes Mr Bates to reevaluate his beliefs. It is a brilliant piece of text and it is wonderfully performed by Kitchen and Elliot, it had me completely fixed to the screen I just wish it was a theatre play so I could experience the power of those words personally.

This play is vile in the way it portrays rape against a disabled woman and I think Alisdair Milne the man who cancelled its original broadcast in 1976 put it best by saying: "nauseating" though "brilliantly made".

This piece of work made me incredibly uncomfortable but it did make me think and also question what was acceptable in the theatre. Was this a step too far? I cannot say yes and I cannot say no because I was so offended by the ideas perpetrated by the sexual scenes.

I do not know what message Dennis Potter wanted to get across because I cannot work it out. It is a piece of work I respect yet find highly offensive. I think this piece is important to watch for any drama student to understand the limitations that sometimes need to be adhered to.