Television
Viewer's Digest
By PETER FORSTER linzurr has a useful phrase somewhere about a performance which was 'a whole thing': but it is becoming a feature of television that we must commonly accept what are not whole perfor- mances at all. Stage plays are perforce cut for the briefer traffic of the screen, so doing actors and playwrights out of opportunities, and those excerpts from West End productions which grateful managements bestow Upon the BBC can be sadly misleading.
Between these types, however, come the pro- grammes which palm off as evidence for judg- ment what is really but the merest viewer's digest; the distortion is no less great because the pro- gramme may be enjoyable. For instance, few who saw the half-hour televised excerpt from Michael Mac Liammoir's 'one-man show at the Royal Court can have realised quite how lop-sidedly he Plugs his conception of Wilde as a Wolfenden Hamlet for two and a half hours in the theatre. (Also, so far as the `handbag' scene in the Importance is concerned. I am bound to say I think it goes even better with more than one actor.) As for the nibbles from the Arts Theatre's Three in last Sunday's Monitor, my own regret is that they did not begin to convey the suffocat- ing mediocrity of those poor little apologies for plays; but even those who take a contrary view can hardly claim that the atmosphere of Mr. Pinter's grim, impenetrable parable was truly conveyed by the first few lines, which had Ernlyn Williams and Alison Leggatt worrying over Which plant was convolvulus. True, it was then most entertaining to have Mr. Williams explain- , ing how, as an actor, he understood 'from inside' What Mr. Pinter meant, though if he were to be asked from outside what the play was about, 'I really wouldn't be able to tell you.' How vague can a vague get? Still, he was at his most sly and charming in his attempt to bridge the gap be- tween old and new in the theatre, and when he remarked that Messrs. Mortimer, Simpson and Pinter proved to be men who 'looked as clean as a whistle,' one could only hope that the words were instantly cabled to Switzerland for the com- fort of Mr. Coward.
But the real point in the context of television is that the viewer without access to either of the very small theatres in which these c'ntertainments are being played had utterly insufficient grounds
on which to decide about their nature. (The possible excuse that Monitor was paying tribute to Mr. Williams's versatility won't wash in view of the line of questioning, which was mainly about the plays.) Likewise, the regular pro- grammes about feature movies deal in snippets no less deceptive for often being fun. There are three of these. Nevile Barker's weekly Close-Up (A-R) sometimes amounts to little more than a roundabout plug for one of the week's new films. Mr. Derek Prowse's features (BBC) deal more with Film as Art, while Mr. Robert Robinson's Picture Parade (BBC) takes its aim somewhere between the two.
Each of these programmes is congenial to watch and performs a service of sorts. Up to a point it may claim to keep viewers informed; beyond that point it provides free advertising for competitors which must be gladly received. Sometimes, though, this has a boomerang effect, because excerpts fail to make a full impact, being bereft of either theatre atmosphere or wide- screen and colour, so that no viewer tempted out to a playhouse or cinema should be surprised if what he sees there bears little resemblance to what he saw on TV. For producers the implication of all this is surely plain: the proper business of television men is television.
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