Top Posts Tagged with #stephen bent

#Under the age

#Thirty minute theatre

#alan clarke

#Single play

#queer tv

#E. A. Whitehead

#Ted Whitehead

#Paul Angelis

#Michael Angelis

#David Lincoln

#Stephen Bent

#Sylvia Brayshay

#Rosalind Elliot

#A...frankly incredible piece of television. I'm not even sure where to start (and I'm sure I won't have enough tags to do this justice) but

#Wow. An intensely complex and difficult character study‚ shot through with a near unbearable sense of menace and the unspoken but

#Inescapable spectre of violence. Opening on an incredibly jarring (given the era‚ given the context‚ given the identity of the actor; Paul

#Angelis‚ then best known as a tough TV copper in Z Cars) an incredible shot of Angelis slowly and carefully applying makeup at a pub

#Counter. We're in the North of England‚ in the early 70s‚ and Paul Angelis is lovingly applying eye shadow and lipstick. It's difficult to

#Overstate what a culture shock this must have been for an idle audience. Angelis is Susie‚ a barkeeper we might describe as trans but whose

#Identity (both in the sense of gender and sex and in a more general idea of person) goes largely unexplored: most reviews seem to use

#Masculine pronouns but I think it's very telling that every character (even those who are antagonistic) refer to Susie by that name and use

#She and her. Susie is... An almost unique character in brit TV of the 1970s. Whitehead was a well respected playwright whose work often

#Explored the uglier side of masculinity (see Alpha Beta for eg.) but who here seems just as concerned with a kind of feminine rivalry;

#Between Susie and the two girls who come into the pub and disrupt a flirtation between Susie and a lairy male customer. That the object of

#Susie's affections is played by Paul's brother Michael Angelis (in fact the only time they shared the screen in their lengthy careers) only

#Adds to the unsettling sense of foreboding and disturbing tension. Much of what follows (which is mostly dialogue: this is a very stagy

#Piece and consciously theatrical in places‚ feeling more like the work of Pinter or Beckett than Whitehead) is unpleasant; this is not in

#Any sense a feel good work and whilst the depiction of queer identity is‚ simply in its presence here‚ something to be lauded and celebrate

#It is not wholly positive: then again‚ there is a definite sympathetic bent to the way Susie is framed within plot and by Clarke. But a

#Darkly unpleasant end note rounds out this play with a nihilistic bleakness that's difficult to take any true enjoyment from. Just. Wow.

#stephen bent