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Available onlinePeter Barnes’s spellbinding play about class as seen by a Buckingham Palace footman is the pick of these four single-handers
Most of Peter Barnes’s people in this quartet of monologues are disenchanted. They rail against social inequalities and speak of time slipping away, of losing their faith, and of cosmic disorder. They are more openly angry than the quietly suffering characters in Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads series, the first of which was written in the same decade Barnes wrote these bite-sized plays.
Resuscitated by Original Theatre Company and Perfectly Normal Productions, they come at a remove from their original form: written for BBC Radio in the 1980s, they are now staged pieces, delivered to us on the screen. Directors Philip Franks and Charlotte Peters seem to want to underline this: a familiar homage to theatre is in the opening of every play, from shots of the empty auditorium (at Theatre Royal in Windsor), to the foyer, chandelier and safety curtain. We see actors walking on to the stage, the camera positioned behind them, so the glare of the spotlight can be felt. The drama cuts away from scenes intermittently to show us – once again – the lights and empty seats. It is a filmic way to break the fourth wall, but it is done too often and feels mannered and unnecessary. Continue reading...