The Weekly Play

If you’re a modern Christian, you believe (or are at least supposed to believe) that Jesus was both man and God. However, the Bible is a bit sketchy about much to do with the man part of the equation, particularly the 30 or so years before Jesus’s ministry began, favouring instead the God part. Over the years, many writers have accordingly tried to humanise Jesus and to depict the man, rather than God, and just after Easter 1969, for one of the BBC’s Wednesday Plays, Dennis Potter threw his hat into the ring with Son Of Man

In the play, which was directed by regular Potter collaborator Gareth Davies, Potter portrays Jesus (Colin Blakely) as a hearty, fiery, well-meaning carpenter who believes that people should try to love their enemies rather than fight all the time, but who is racked by self doubt as to whether he is the popularly anticipated Messiah. Co-starring Edward Hardwicke as Judas, Brian Blessed as Peter and Robert Hardy as Pontius Pilate, the play eschews everything divine in Jesus’s story, as well as details such as the 30 pieces of silver and Mary Magdalene, in favour of psychological investigation of the characters, starting with Jesus’s struggle with his own divinity in the wilderness up to his crucifixion on Golgotha. 

Although shown just after Easter and despite Potter’s long-time bête noir, Mary Whitehouse, accusing him of blasphemy, the play met with little controversy or resistance, perhaps due to its obviously low budget. Indeed, Potter later expressed regret that it was “shot on video in three days in an electronic studio on a set that looks as though it’s trembling and about to fall down”. All the same it’s a powerful piece that was later adapted for the stage at the Roundhouse, London, with Frank Finlay as Jesus and a slightly different, less cruel ending, a mere six months later.

But you can watch the original below. 

Ingmar Bergman is obviously best known as a film director, but intriguingly, back in 1970, he wrote a play for British television called The Lie. To be strictly accurate, it was commissioned by the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation on behalf of European members participating in ‘The Largest Theatre in the World’ – a project to have a play broadcast simultaneously in several languages across Europe – and the BBC carried the UK version as part of its Play for Today strand.

This was directed by Alan Bridges and starred Frank Finlay and Gemma Jomes as a married couple with a not especially great relationship. Finlay’s character is being over-looked in favour of younger men at work, while Jones spends most of her time with her mentally ill brother (Joss Ackland) and her lover (John Carson). The only things that keep the two together are lies. And then the lies get exposed.

Sounds as cheery as most Bergman works, hey? Well, it’s this week’s Wednesday’s Play and you can watch it below. Enjoy!

Interestingly, despite The Lie being a European project, Alex Segal directed a version in 1973 in the US for CBS’s Playhouse 90 that starred George Segal, Shirley Knight Hopkins, Robert Culp, Victor Buono and William Daniels.

UPDATE: Now with newly working video, thanks to Chaim

Bad reviews and low audience turnouts can really shake a playwright’s nerves. Case in point: Rodney Ackland.

Ackland’s The Pink Room/The Escapists was the playwright’s first large-cast drama, following a series of musical collaborations during the 1940s. First performed in Brighton and then at the Lyric Hammersmith in 1952, the play was set in Soho right after World War 2 and had a cast of characters including gay men, lesbians, party girls, drunks and drag queens that pushed stage ‘morality’ at the time to its limits.

Unsurprisingly, it got a severe critical panning and the play’s financier – no lesser a person than Terence Rattigan – is alleged to have never wanted to see Ackland again.

As a result, for 40 years, apart from one further play and an adaptation, that was it from Ackland. However, in the 1980s, when permissiveness was greater and while suffering from leukaemia, Ackland decided to rewrite the play, retitling it Absolute Hell in the process. And in 1988, it was performed in Richmond at the Orange Tree to some success – a little too late for Ackland.

In 1991, just a few months before Ackland’s death, Anthony Page adapted it for the BBC. Starring Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Ronald Pickup, Francesca Annis, Charles Gray, Nathaniel Parker, Ray Winstone and many others, Absolute Hell is thoroughly enjoyable, if only to see the great and the good gaying it up for all they’re worth.

Enjoy!