Sep 27, 2024
Play for Today: The Cry (BBC, 1984)
"It's best forgotten about."
"You're not gonna be making a complaint?"
"Complaints? We're not making any complaints! We don't want to know about any complaints."
"Complaints against who?"
"Well, the police."
"Who should I complain to about the police?"
"Well, the police, I suppose."
"What good would that do me?"
#play for today#the cry#1984#christopher menaul#derek mahon#adrian dunbar#michael duffy#doreen keogh#breffni mckenna#carol moore#rio fanning#john keegan#michael gormley#peter quigley#oliver maguire#derek lord#birdy sweeney#stella mccusker#denys hawthorne#one of the very final Plays for Today before the series was formally shelved in mid 1984; adapted from a short story by celebrated Irish#writer John Montague‚ this is a short‚ tightly wound entry among those final plays. it concerns a Northern Irish journalist returning home#and witnessing first hand the casual brutality of the Ulster Special Constabulary (commonly called the B Specials) in the late 1950s#the focus however is not on the act of violence which opens the play‚ but on the reactions of the local populace: Dunbar's journo decides#to write about the event (pushed by his father‚ a revolutionary who'd rather his son used a gun than a typewriter; the scenes of them#debating political activism could very easily have been laid on too thick but actually they're pitched just right). he's met with fearful#silence at every turn‚ with nobody willing to speak up and face inevitable reprisals. it's a horribly tense piece; through modern eyes i#kept waiting for some terrible fate to befall Dunbar (ie. his being killed) but actually‚ as the play makes clear‚ his terrible fate is the#disillusionment he suffers: in the people he once respected who he now views as cowards‚ in the system he once felt neutral about but now#detests‚ and in his own ideals about using a free press to bring about substantial social change peacefully‚ which now appears impossible#Menaul ends the play with news coverage of the violent suppression of protestors a decade later; it's a powerful end to a powerful piece
