Intra-mural study without a lesson

Press, 22 December 1978, Page 11

Intra-mural study without a lesson

Yorkshire Television’s play, “ A Chink in the Wall,” shown on Television One on Wednesday night, held the attention for reasons which are not hard to discern and have mainly to do with Miss Barbara Kellerman, but it was a fairly insignificant piece of work. It followed what by now is ■ the standard' pattern established by Pinter and Others: into a situation in ■ which characters dependent on each other have established a routine of life comes a disturbing intruder who breaks up all the patterns and goes away leaving everybody rearranged and reconstituted, usually for the worse. In ‘‘A Chink in the Wall” we found, walled in in an enclosed summery garden, an anicent lord, his paralysed mistress, his housekeeper with whom he enjoys and ambiguous relationship. and the housekeeper’s sort, for whom she is ambitious. Along comes the intruder, played by Miss Kellerman. Predictably, the next thing that happens is that the son enjoys an outbreak of sexual intercourse with

Miss Kellerman. The reasons for the outbreak are not hard to find, since we are shown a good deal of the top half of Miss Kellerman in what might be described as a “Playboy” situation. Putting naked women aside, an act of renuncia-

By

A. K. GRANT

tion which does not come my way as often as I could wish. 1 observe that in this sort of play, the climactic sexual encounter with the disturbing intruder is supposed, if.the formula is being followed properly, to leave the resident particippant changed in his relationship both to himself and the other residents. But in “A Chink in the Wall,’’ Miss Kellerman goes away, (fully clothed, I am sorry to say), leaving - everything as it was before. She does receive an inconclusive lecture from the housekeeper to the effect that liberated women are not really liberated, and that one day she (Miss Kellerman) will be as miserable as her (the

housekeeper), a proposition which seems inherently unlikely unless Miss Kellerman decides to take up housekeeping. Or, of course, teaching in a New Zealand secondary school: nothing could be worse than that, and indeed one wonders if the Miss Kellerman character is in fact one of the numerous New Zealand teachers who have given up the job in disgust and gone overseas. Certainly, if we are losing teachers as beautiful as Miss Kellerman the situation is more serious than I thought. However, apart from the ex ident charms of Miss Kellerman, and for what it said about the New Zealand secondary - school system, there was little point to “A Chink in the Wall.” But the title has given me an idea for a play of ray own, which revolves around a group of people dominated by an enormous reproduction of that painting of the green-skinned Chinese girl which everybody used to have in their living-rooms a few years ago. I shall call it “A Chink on the Wall.”