Facing up to Kenneth More

Press, 15 June 1978, Page 15

Facing up to Kenneth More

By

A. K GRANT

On Tuesday night I strained ears and eyes to detect the faintest rustle of action in “Six Faces.” It was not be be. First of all, Richard Drew and Lucy Walters didn’t go to the restaurant that Drew wanted to go to. Then when they went to another restaurant, Lucy got drunk, so that night they didn’t make love. Then the next morning, because of business. Drew didn’t meet Lucy for morning coffee, a feat

which he proceeded to cap by not meeting her for lunch. And when they went out for dinner, they didn’t in fact have dinner because Lucy was furious over not being dressed properly. To be sure, they did make love that night, a development which had been presaged by a brief shot of Kika Markham's right nipple. But it appeared the next morning that although they had enjoyed it at the time, the episode had not strengthened their relationship. Along the way we saw Drew playing bowls with a lot of drunken Italians, which is apparently the way business is done over there. We saw him pawing his pouffy friend from the

Consulate, a man as unpleasant and uninteresting as Drew himself, and we saw him, although completely in the wrong being intolerably patronising to Lucy. If Tuesday’s episode represented, one of Drew’s

six faces, then it is one he should keep hidden behind a yashmak. Furthermore, T discover from reading “Visions Before Midnight,” by the doyen of television critics, Clive James, that James was reviewing this programme for the “Observer” in October, 1972. That doesn’t necessarily make the programme mutton dressed up as lamb, but it does make it mutton which has been deep-fro-zen for a hell of a long time. The best comment on the programme was supplied by Drew himself. “Lucy,” he said wearily at one point, “what is all this about?" A very good question.

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