Industrious as a baroque composer, and often as facile, prolific writer John Mortimer hit big (in a small way) on his first play, THE DOCK BRIEF, a one-act two-hander about a third-rate barrister for the unrepresented (think Public Defender) chosen by a hapless man who admits to killing his wife after something went wrong between her and their excessively good-humored bachelor tenant. Performed extensively from Brit Fests to San Quentin (and most recently taped for Czech tv), this retitled film adaptation opens up the action in having client & lawyer step physically into scenes only spoken of on stage; a conceit that dilutes stage unity and adds little. Fortunately, interest is sustained thru the opposition of Richard Attenborough’s overcooked naturalism as Mr. Common Man vs. Peter Sellers’ unnaturally stylized comic finesse; boosting the dramatic tension of Mortimer’s tidy drama more than its twist ending does. But the real interest, under James Hill’s tv-ready direction, comes from feeling you’ve been let in on a previously unknown (if failed) first draft of Mortimer’s greatest invention, RUMPOLE OF THE BAILEY. But what a difference was made in having Rumpole smarter than everyone else (if resigned to futility) than as the self-deluded loser Sellers plays.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Ron Grainer’s main theme lifted directly out of Prokofiev’s PETER AND THE WOLF, twenty-five years old at the time and under copyright. Did no one notice?
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Start anywhere in RUMPOLE OF THE BAILEY’s seven improving seasons (1978 - ‘92).
No comments:
Post a Comment