Television
Crazy Ladies
Clive Gammon
The Walter Mitty idea, which was a laugh-riot in 1948 when the film came out of Thurber's story, has worn somewhat thin over the years with the pounding it had from people like Keith Waterhouse so that the Armchair Theatre offering last week — Amy, Wonderful Amy (Thames) — had built-in elements of deja-vu. All the same, the play started interestingly enough. Maybe the time has come for a nostalgic Amy Johnson revival and certainly no one seems to have noticed hitherto that she's a natural candidate for canonisation by Women's Lib.
Young Barbara, the heroine, obsessed with Amy's image, was credible and compelling at the start but once she started hearing Amy's voice in the middle of the night one became a 'little bewildered. Was this an amusing fantasy or a dark account of a mind splintering? It became clear that it was the latter before the lame, air-crash ending came, but by then one had become conditioned to giggle a bit at Barbara. A split aim on the writer's part, I fancy, which led to a loss of direction and finally of interest. Valerie Holliman as Barbara, though, must be exempted from full responsibility for this; her performance was finely observed.
She wasn't the only crazy lady on the box last week, for Miss Julie was around as well in the filmed version of the RSC's production (BBC2). Now, I expect a million people have seen the film previously and since the turn of the century millions more have seen Strindburg's play on stage, SPeCtatOTJune 1, 1974
but Miss Julie was new to me and I was fascinated from the moment we saw Jean, the servant, concocting an abortifacient for dogs, or for lady dogs as we say in Texas, so I reckon I'm entitled to saY something about it.
But what? An inopportune Phone call drew me away from the h,ox at what was evidently a critical moment, for when I returned Miss Julie was passionately burning her knickers at the kitchen range. Later, emotion spilled everywhere like the thin jam confectioners use in doughnuts. I found it hard to know how to react. At one level palpably absurd things were happening and absurd things being said. At another and more important one the actions and speeches seemed moving and Meaningful. The screeched insults, the violence barely contained and finally released conveyed the message more surely than the Words. And what was the message? The old sex war, I suppose, as Thurber would say. It was a Pretty sexy play, come to that, for all Miss Julie's unattractive pallor and frizzy hair.
A pallor, unattractive or not, is What Sikhs and West Indians lack in order to become regarded as truly British. On Man Alive knI3C2) last week, they were Working over that well worked subject about how immigrants get nn in Britain, particularly focusing (aa they would say) on the quesbon of assimilation.
There was the usual nicety of selection apparent in the choice of People for interview. They had got hold of an articulate, well educated Sikh and a black West Indian 4ndergraduate, then ran them in Parallel with two dim white working-class lads who could be relied upon to say something daft about immigrants. There was also Young and very religiously inclined Jew who seemed un , tYPical of most Jews in this ' country one would think. And there was the usual lack of ally progression of thought, and of any conclusion. Statements were made flatly and left at that. So What was the point? To make us all more brotherly? On an unsnlihisticated viewer the result r Was likely to be quite the opposite. It was almost as if the audience Was being teased, as the whites on the programme were, into betray , Ing prejudice. This was a fine Programme for stirring it up and ooking innocent like a schoolboy making trouble for his sister.
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