Oct 7, 2024
Play for Today: Buffet (BBC, 1976)
"Freddie likes squalid plays."
"I don't think I care for the theatre. If the theatre came to me, then that would be different. One has to go to it."
"I like a play to be about nice people. I like a comedy. I like to be taken out of myself. The plays Freddie likes to see are about squalid people. I like a play to reflect my own problems, I like a play to be about people like ourselves."
#play for today#buffet#single play#classic tv#bbc#1976#rhys adrian#mike newell#tony britton#phyllida law#amanda barrie#robin bailey#clive swift#maureen pryor#edward de souza#nigel hawthorne#anthony pedley#george innes#william squire#arthur pentelow#esmond webb#i enjoyed my last Adrian PfT (Evelyn) enough that i sort out another; like Evelyn‚ this was adapted from one of the writer's own radio#plays (and like Evelyn‚ seems to have come in for some criticism for its failure to match its visuals with the stylised dialogue). this is#the stronger of the two‚ for me. it seems on the surface to be treading similar ground (a middle class‚ middle aged business type heading#into midlife crisis) but the treatment is more pointed here‚ the style even more unnatural. Britton's crisis is much more existential than#the one Ed Woodward was suffering; he's in constant fear of 'cracking up'‚ as is nearly everyone he meets and speaks to. these passing#conversations‚ mostly in railway buffets‚ are the meat of the play and they gradually become stranger and more detached from reality as the#play goes on (and Britton inches towards his crack up). they reach a Pinteresque height of dark absurdism in a scene in which he is#pressed for money by an airline steward who insists the price of landing has been raised while Britton was midflight. it honestly won't be#to everyone's taste but i found myself truly gripped by this in the second half‚ an inventive and very funny black comedy of ageing despair