Play for Today Pilgrimage

  Zoë - The Right Prospectus is the second play to be broadcast in the Play for Today series. Together with its predecessor, The Long Distance Piano Player, it ought to have been enough to have the entire series cancelled, in my opinion. I have rarely seen such a tedious load of piffle. The play opens on the visit of a wealthy couple to a boys' public school. The usual cliches associated with the portrayal of such institutions - a cricket match on a sunlit pitch overlooked by fine buildings, boys in tail-coats, others in boaters, a headmaster in a woodlined study, are all in evidence.  The visit complete, the couple drive off in a Bentley or similarly grand vehicle, complete with chauffeur. We find them next at lunch in a country hotel or restaurant, where they pore over prospectuses for further public schools. It emerges from their conversation that they have no children and that the wife wants none. Having removed the broad brimmed green hat she wore to tour the school - it mat

Zoë:  The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil is, according to the information accompanying the film on YouTube,a play written in the 1970s by Merseyside-born playwright John McGrath. From April 1973, beginning at Aberdeen Arts Centre, it was performed in a touring production in community centres in Scotland by 7:84 and other community theatre groups. The television version, directed by John Mackenzie was broadcast on 6 June 1974 by the BBC as part of the Play for Today series. The play seems to me to be the nearest you can get on telly to "promenade theatre". The one and only thing I like about promenade theatre is that you get a bit of exercise as you have to move about a building, rather than sitting in a seat in the stalls. Of course, when watching such a thing on television this is no longer the case. Instead of you wandering about, the production does the wandering for you, jumping between the interior of Dornie village hall - complete with rather bemused, mostly