The Wednesday Play: In Camera (1964)

26 September 2012 Rob Buckley The Weekly Play, Theatre, UK TV 3 Comments

In Camera

Time for a little bit of culture. Hell, it has been remarked, is other people. In fact, it was Jean-Paul Sartre who remarked that – kind of – in his 1944 existentialist play Huis Clos. ‘L’enfer, c’est les autres’ as is actually remarked is a bit more involved than the literal idea of the nasty afterlife being spending eternity with others, but that is exactly what happens in Huis Clos, in which three damned souls, Garcin, Inès and Estelle, are brought to the same room in Hell by a mysterious valet. There they discuss the crimes that resulted in their damnation, and things escalate before their final realisation of the nature of their torment.

In 1964, director Philip Saville, who went on to win a BAFTA for Boys from the Blackstuff, adapted and directed Stuart Gilbert’s English-language version of Huis Clos for The Wednesday Play as In Camera – ironically, the closest ‘English’ translation you’re going to get of Huis Clos. And you want to know who starred in it?

Only Harold bloody Pinter, that’s who.

Enjoy!

Author

  • Rob Buckley

    I’m Rob Buckley, a journalist who writes for UK media magazines that most people have never heard of although you might have heard me on the podcast Lockdown Land or Radio 5 Live’s Saturday Edition or Afternoon Edition. I’ve edited Dreamwatch, Sprocket and Cambridge Film Festival Daily; been technical editor for TV producers magazine Televisual; reviewed films for the short-lived newspaper Cambridge Insider; written features for the even shorter-lived newspaper Soho Independent; and was regularly sarcastic about television on the blink-and-you-missed-it “web site for urban hedonists” The Tribe. Since going freelance, I've contributed to the likes of Broadcast, Total Content + Media, Action TV, Off The Telly, Action Network, TV Scoop and The Custard TV.

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