Games provided sauce for mediocre fare

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33446, 30 January 1974, Page 4

Games provided sauce for mediocre fare

Monday’s was not a particularly sensational programme in Games coverage, but the sports films turned out to be easily the highlight of an evening’s viewing that was spliced together by two mediocre imported plays.

“To See Ourselves: The Wedding Gift” turned out to be just the old story of the nymphomaniac and the clergyman, wrapped up in enough snow and Victorian prurience to make it looklike Canada’s answer to "Doctor Zhivago.” The girl’s general designs are revealed by a soppy voice over towards the start; they travel off through the forest, and find themselves

holed up in a log cabin for the night. How to keep warm? The girl makes a suggestion. “We’ll both roll up in these?” asks he, incredulously. "Of course — it’s the only way to keep warm,” says she, practical as ever. And so it all develops. A horse knocks on the door, and is brought in, supplying an animal element to compensate for the camera’s blushes and the clergyman’s coyness (“In front of you?” is his key line.) Such a cliche-studded story-line, cemented together with several truckloads of the coarsest irony that the playwright, Thomas Raddall, could get, sounds like a worthy sequel to a dinner that was preceded by “The Doris Day Show” as an appetiser. However, the play was well produced, tolerably acted, and had some good camera work, especially the big close-ups of Linda Goranson. But why give a thing like this an early evening slot? Certainly, its approach came very close to the prurient fantasies of a repressed third-former, but al) except its crassest implications must have gone over the heads of younger children, and for adults it seemed a desperate attempt to get someone to listen to Mantovan i on the national radio. At 10 o’clock, the pro-

gramme left the Comcompensate for the camera's monwealth Games for, another play, this time set in the darkest recesses of the British civil service. A couple have found that the seven-year itch has grown into the 17-year rigor mortis, ostensibly with the aid of government employment, though they both , seem such monumentally

> uninteresting people that it J is hard to imagine them > ever having been much difj ferent. Enter an old univer-; J sity friend who looks like! i the young Hemingway and; : sounds like the old Cicero; i he was spent the last 17 years globe-trotting as a ; “charity worker,” and his dialogue is little more than a ; deluge of cosmopolitan . name-dropping. : The drama looks like de- ■ veloping into a “who gets i sick of whom first” issue i (the audience winning by about half an hour), when a ■ complication occurs: the ■ civil servant’s security cleari ance is stopped just when his life and marriage look ■ like being revitalised by a promotion, and he is torn i between allegiance to his job and to his friend (who was ■ once arrested in East Berlin for having long hair, and is now highly suspect). The A.T.V. production by John Sichel was stylish in places, and included some effective cuts from livingroom to bedroom conversations. John Carlisle gave a good performance as the ratty careerist, but the play was ultimately hamstrung by the quality of Paul Wheeler’s script and material. All of which leaves me more convinced than ever that the N.Z.B.C. does not have enough confidence in its own products. How long will we have to wait for another screening of the two ' best of the New Zealand Playhouse series, or for the London Weekend production of Wellington playwright Edward Bowman’s "Salve Regina,” with Glenda Jack- 1 son and Miriam Karlin? Or for the best of the recent ! documentaries, like Alistair ’ Campbell’s “Kapiti”? i Again, the Commonwealth ' Games coverage reached a '

■lhigh standard, though with Ltwo slight defects. Someone ■ (should explain a few things about make-up to the sports : announcers, and the cameramen still seem to be ■ creeping in too close: a . quick close-up of an ath- ■ lete’s face can contribute a lot to a film, but for most shots one expects enough i distance to understand the strategy of what is going on. It is irritating to see a boxer disappearing fast out of the frame — and for' Jsome athletes it would per-' ihaps be charitable if they j were never shown in closeup. —H. D. McN.