Set against the backdrop of Silver Jubilee of Elizabeth II, the play depicts a single mother’s struggles in this highly polemical and unremittingly bleak diatribe against government welfare cuts from the poor and disabled. The derogatory term ‘spongers’ is used by British tabloid press to describe people who are dependent on welfare support, however the play presents the case of a family who desperately need the help.Read More »
Although Jack Rosenthal’s television plays are peppered with Jewish characters and passing references drawn from the writer’s Jewish roots, only three bring the subject centre stage: The Evacuees (BBC, tx. 5/3/1975), Bye, Bye, Baby (Channel 4, tx. 3/11/1992) and Bar Mitzvah Boy.
Unlike The Evacuees, Bar Mitzvah Boy is not autobiographical, and Rosenthal even played down its Jewishness in a Radio Times interview prior to its first broadcast by stressing the universality of its central theme: “When I was young and reading comics there were always men heroes, actually aged about 15, who were playing football for England or winning wars single-handed. I used to think that when I’m a man I’ll be like that, never indecisive or frightened, but there suddenly comes a point of disillusionment when you realise it is a fallacy”.Read More »
Based on the true story of Vivian Nicholson, whose husband Keith won £152,319 on the pools (a sum that would be worth in excess of £2 million today), Spend Spend Spend is a modern morality tale in which two naïve working-class northerners are thrust overnight into a world of hitherto unimaginable wealth, which they prove wholly unable to handle. This is demonstrated from the start when Vivian, suffering from severe stage fright, blurts out during the formal presentation of her winnings that she’s going to “spend spend spend!”, thus creating an impression of selfish hedonism that’s largely at odds with the complex characterisation that Jack Rosenthal goes on to give her.Read More »
An extraordinary evocation of conflicting forces within England: authority, tradition, hypocrisy, landscape, art, sexuality, and most of all, its mystical, ancient past. All of this comes together in Stephen, a rather prissy adolescent, and his growing pains deep in Elgar’s Worcestershire. Marrying the very different styles and concerns of writer David Rudkin and director Alan Clarke, Penda’s Fen delves deep into the heart of England to try and find answers to its identity. You’re unlikely to have seen anything quite like this and its strange events will stay with you for years afterwards.Read More »
A married couple, after a life time of work and bringing up a family, retire and awaken to the fast changing world around them, the habitual nature of their relationship, and what they have left.Read More »
Synopsis:
When a pay discrepancy continues without any resolution, glass factory workers turn to their union for support. But when it is not forthcoming, they take things into their own hands.Read More »
From the Guardian:
Home Sweet Home: The tragic-comic tale of a lonely postman, the social workers who chivvy him about his estranged teenage daughter, and his secret affairs with the wives of his fellow postmen.Read More »
Dennis Potter’s most controversial work by a country mile, BRIMSTONE AND TREACLE was a BBC Play For Today production that tackled an almost unthinkable subject. A bickering, middle-aged couple with a brain-damaged daughter (Pattie) are visited one typically fraught evening by an overbearingly polite young man named Martin, who claims to be a friend of Pattie’s. The mother is thoroughly charmed by the stranger, the father is less convinced, but – in desperate need of some respite from the round-the-clock attention their daughter requires – they allow Martin to stay with them anyway. Trouble is, Martin is an extremely disturbed individual who either is – or believes himself to be – the Devil incarnate, and takes to raping Pattie when her parents aren’t at home.Read More »