Dec 12, 2019
Armchair Theatre: The Thought Of Tomorrow (ABC, 1959)
"Elspeth, is it any good asking for a truce?"
"A truce?"
"We aren't happy are we, either of us. If I had more strength, perhaps I could do something, but you've got all the strength and you're using it against me. I'm asking you for a truce."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"I have a lot of fighting to do. Life is fighting, all the time. It seems so wasteful to be fighting each other as well."
#armchair theatre#The thought of tomorrow#Single play#ABC#classic tv#1959#James brabazon#Alan Cooke#rupert davies#Gillian lind#Frank pettingell#Keith Banks#Dennis chinnery#jennifer daniel#Brian dent#Valerie gearon#Irene Richmond#Stanley van beers#Brabazon's only play for Armchair Theatre and the first of Cooke's directing credits for the anthology (he'd direct some 25 or so over#The following decade). Also a rare surviving 50s edition; i wish for these reasons that it was a more impressive instalment but actually#It's just...fine? It's not a bad play by any means but it's nothing really special. Davies is a high powered businessman who's starting#To buckle under the pressures of work. Add to the mix some non prescription meds and a heart problem and a revenge plot by a#Former colleague once betrayed. Theres a lot going on; it's almost Christmas too (the whole thing can actually be read as a take on#A Christmas Carol). It's a moral tale in which the lesson is to simply live life for itself and to worry less about work (easily said for#Davies' mogul not so easy for the rest of us). There are good things: Cooke was always a stylish director and he uses close ups and tight#Framing to really get across the pressure Davies is feeling. Davies is good (he was just a year away from playing Maigret and the#Immortality that would bring) Daniel and Gearon are both fine support and Chinnery is great in a neckless weak sort of character (I didn't#Recognise him at first; I'm so used to seeing him with his thick horn rimmed glasses that it didn't register as him at all). Unfortunately#The cast isn't uniformly strong. Lind is very awkward and overplays in a very victorian and theatrical manner (lots of awkward pauses and#Staring into the middle distance). A fine play but the few other surviving 50s episodes I've seen suggest this was a notably weaker effort
