#the play within a play by chauffeur driven rolls royce‚ only to get out‚ change out of her finery‚ and make the final bit of journey by
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Play for Today: Come the Revolution (BBC, 1977)
"You see, heavy irony is good, so long as it's so heavy we know it's irony."
"Right, we'll change it for Sunday."
"Medical inspection bit, solid fun. And the RSM bit, especially the wig joke: that's universal."
"Oh! We thought that was corny."
"No!"
"We couldn't think of anything else."
"Corny's very useful to us. It gets straight through to the people. They like corn, recognise it."
#play for today#come the revolution#single play#robin chapman#michael darlow#1977#bbc#richard o'callaghan#deborah fallender#john telfer#warwick evans#myrna stevens#colin bell#derek smith#vivian pickles#kenneth colley#roger avon#jumoke debayo#anne orwin#peter cartwright#biting satirical piece about an agitprop theatre group whose heads are turned by the prospect of success; Chapman had come up through Joan#Littlewood's Theatre Workshop‚ so presumably knew the intricacies and difficulties of budget theatre all too well. the depiction of the#theatre group‚ their leftist infighting and self contradictions‚ is sharp but not without some level of affection (or at least knowing#recognition). no such understanding for Pickles as a ghastly version of a celebrity radical: she's escorted most of the way to a viewing of#the play within a play by chauffeur driven rolls royce‚ only to get out‚ change out of her finery‚ and make the final bit of journey by#bicycle to maintain her socialist image. scenes like that may be just a little on the nose (as is‚ purposefully or not‚ the revue that's at#the centre of everything) but Chapman's script is undeniably very funny. he skewers just about everyone and everything with pointed barbs#or through the absurd myopia of his would be revolutionaries who sincerely (or not) believe a student play might usher in a new age of#armed resistance; but any real enmity is reserved for Pickles and Colley as the opportunist hypocrites whose attempts to mould the group to#a particular image are astoundingly (and quite predictably) self defeating.
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