Aug 19, 2020
Play for Today: The Evacuees (BBC, 1975)
"It wasn't German, it was Yiddish!"
"It's the same thing!"
"It never is, is it mam?"
"All the Yiddisher talk Yiddish, that's why they're Yiddisher."
"It's German!"
"So it's German! Does that make it German?"
#The evacuees#Jack rosenthal#play for today#Single play#alan parker#maureen lipman#Gary Carp#Steven Serember#margery mason#Ray Mort#Paul Besterman#Barron Casenov#Margery Withers#aubrey edwards#Ian East#Ivor Roberts#Laurence Cohen#Classic Rosenthal in its gentle examination of particular life experience (of being northern of being Jewish of being poor)#And in that wonderfully authentic ear for very real very funny very devestating dialogue. Unusual Rosenthal in both its scope#(being set over a comparatively long time span when compared to much of his single day or even less work as well as the numerous locations)#And for being so directly biographical: Jack always drew from the well of his own life experience but rarely so openly and so nakedly.#Lipman gives one of her quietest and most dignified performances and her challenge is met by the wonderful Margery Mason whose cruelty and#Prejudice is so deeply rooted and layered so thoroughly that she is convinced of her own kindness and innate goodness. Two powerhouse#Performances but where this falls down is in the wider casting. The boys are all very good (the two leads as well as their various#Classmates) but in casting non Jewish actors in vital Jewish roles the production team make a vital (and easily avoidable) error. Ray Mort#Was a fine character actor but he simply doesn't convince here and his uneasy delivery of typically Jewish mannerisms and speech patterns#Grinds his scenes into stilted unevenness. Margery Withers goes too far the other way and becomes caricature. It's deeply frustrating and#Really quite inexcusably lazy casting (and something Jack himself was deeply unhappy with per Lipman's intro on the dvd).#Still this is a writer very near to the top of his game (his best work for my money would follow in the second half of the 1970s) and there#Is a lot of joy to be taken from a now familiar narrative told from such a unique and under represented point of view