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Sleeping
Dogs To Welsh Innocents
Between October
1967 and April 1969, The Wednesday Play delivered fifty evenings
of unrivalled entertainment to the masses. Although somewhat falling
short of their best (which, remarkably, had been delivered in the space
of one entire season as opposed to a steady accumulation of absolute
and unquestionable "classics"), the series still sustained
the prestige of a quality vessel for drama which seemingly knew no limits,
and practically eclipsed the success of Sydney Newman's ITV brainchild
Armchair Theatre.
Pitchi
Poi |
The
introduction of new producers Graeme Macdonald, Irene Shubik and
Pharic Maclaren (working from the BBC Scotland studios and
delivering one notable Scottish play per season for the remainder
of The Wednesday Play) served to "mix-it-up" as it were,
injecting new blood into the production structure of the series and ensuring
that the content and presentation never remained stale or stilted. The
capacity of the series to entertainment, surprise, court controversy and
blur the lines between drama, comedy, comedy-drama and drama-documentary
continued unabated, with the more notable successes of the seventh and
eighth seasons of The Wednesday Play proving to be Pitchi Poi
(another presentation under the banner title of The Largest Theatre
In The World), Robert Muller's Death Of A Private (providing
a dramatic powerful role for Dudley Sutton), the conclusion of
Nemone Lethbridge's delightfully comic trilogy in An Officer
Of The Court, David Mercer's Let's Murder Vivaldi, John
Mortimer's comic offering, Infidelity Took Place, a moving
portrait of unrequited homosexual attraction in Spoiled (a magnificent
performance from Michael Craig), J B Priestley's Anyone For
Tennis? (a marvellous example of the sort of play The Wednesday
Play would never normally be associated with, but turned on its head
in terms of content and presentation to the extent that the play became
a wonderful send-up of the very characters and viewership it was never
disposed to serve), the delightful Scottish play The Lower Largo
Sequence and Jean Marsh's moving and heart-wrenching performance
in A Bit Of Crucifixion, Father (which concerned itself with a
large Catholic family and the dilemma facing the matriarch when
she has to choose between her own continuing well-being and an abortion).
On The Eve of Publication |
A Beast With Two Backs |
Death Of A Private |
Dennis Potter delivered two controversial and high-profile plays
in the form of A Beast With Two Backs (set in the Forest of
Dean and concerning a brutal death seemingly at the hands of a roaming
bear) and Son Of Man (an exploration of Jesus the Man as
opposed to Jesus the Messiah, and the first play Potter was
justly proud of having produced), and joining such august company was
the start of a wonderful David Mercer trilogy, On The Eve Of
Publication (which examined cross-generational relationships and the
power of one man), the story of which would continue in the 1970
plays The Cellar And The Almond Tree and Emma's Time (the
last of which afforded Michele Dotrice pride of place as the woman
in a late controversial writer's life and her isolation following his
death). Fay Weldon's wonderfully cynical view of cigarette advertising
in Smoke Screen, and Ann Beach's memorable portrayal of
a relative Welsh innocent in Blodwen, Home From Rachel's Marriage
were also notable fixtures over the course of fifty remarkably consistent
editions in the series.
Shubik and Macdonald's production expertise had fostered
a rich variety of plays which commanded audience attention and sustained
critical acclaim, which enjoyed perfect visual realisation at the hands
of directors of the prestige of Roderick Graham, Waris Hussein, Gilchrist
Calder, Moira Armstrong, Kenneth Loach and Herbert Wise. However,
over the course of these plays, audience figures had markedly risen and
fallen in accordance with the relative level of controversy associated
with the content, and, as The Wednesday Play steadily became a
victim of its own success, disconcerting rumblings within the BBC Television
hierarchy were planning to bring this high-profile series to an end…unless
a solution could be found.
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