Love With A Capital 'L'
Love With A Capital 'L'
Oran Mor, Glasgow
Mary Brennan
Pie eaten, pint quaffed and the play on-stage is keen to serve up some chewy issues.
The office interior, with a huge desk dominating the set, harks back to 1929 when the BBC was the British Broadcasting Company, speaking to the nation across radio waves only. Sir John Reith is Director General, exerting autocratic control over matters of morality - both public and private - while his Head of Talks Hilda Matheson is challenging his beliefs on appropriate broadcast material by having Harold Nicolson and his wife Vita Sackville-West discuss what makes a perfect marriage.
Given that Hilda and Vita were having an affair, and Harold was having fun with various chaps, the couple's advice is like a red rag to the bullish Reith. No - don't say 'red'. That smacks of bolshevism, another of his betes noirs.
In the course of Tony Cox's first stage play - a co-production with Edinburgh's Traverse and Perth Theatre, directed by Hamish Pirie - the collision between Reith and Matheson sadly veers into tranches of indigestible jaw-jaw. Despite the sovereign efforts of Benny Young, all growly hectoring and lofty superiority as Reith, and Lesley Hart in brisk "New Woman" mode as Matheson, the characters never free themselves from the purlieus of academic debate.
Was Reith a closet homosexual, forever shackled to memories of a lad he loved and lost to a woman? Did this make his entire sojourn at the BBC an odyssey of canting hypocrisy? Did all the angels on the head of this very small pin pay their licence fee? Frankly, it's hard to care or be interested in raking over old bones especially when they're given such a dusty treatment.
Sponsored by Heineken
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article