Friendly Words for ‘Film Society’ in London

Jon Robin Baitz’s “The Film Society” received friendly reviews from the London critics last week, even from the ones who weren’t terribly keen about it.

First seen in January, 1987, at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, Baitz’s play concerns a crumbling South African prep school--white, of course--in the early 1970s. Irving Wardle of the London Times found the play “an intensely English piece of work,” raising questions of how a torpid culture, symbolized by the school’s faculty, copes with change.

“Up to a point, Mr. Baitz comes up with some chillingly plausible answers,” Wardle wrote. “There is a compulsive retreat into administrative trivia and a clampdown on discipline and cleaning up the toilets.”

Thereafter, Wardle thought, the playwright muddied his trail. But on balance the play provided a “quietly devastating portrait of a little society in the grip of moral contortions, dread of exile and craven job-consciousness.”

Martin Hoyle of the Financial Times found the play intensely American, in its “dismissiveness of the incomprehensible, when it comes to the compromise of cultures existing side by side, sometimes blending.” A British playwright, Hoyle seemed to believe, wouldn’t have been so startled at South Africa’s paradoxes.

But if the point of view was a bit naive, and the handling a bit “glib,” Hoyle found Baitz’s dialogue “powerful without being exaggerated.” And Hoyle believed the central character, a wimp who little by little becomes a monster.

Michael Billington of the Guardian found Baitz’s hero (played by Denis Lawson) too detached for the good of the play, and also wanted more of a sense of the ongoing life of the school and the surrounding country. Still, Baitz’s script was literate, logical and clearly structured--a play worth arguing about.

Only Milton Shulman of the Guardian was grumpy. He found Baitz’s theme--the white South African coming to terms with his conscience--”well worn.” As for Michael Attenborough’s staging at the Hampstead Theatre, Shulman found the pace all too “studied,” although occasionally brightened by “some amusing, ironic lines.”

With “Tamara” a hit in New York as well as Los Angeles, people on both coasts are asking: Which character should I follow around?

“The maid or the housekeeper or the valet,” advises designer Robert Checci. “Tamara herself never goes downstairs, but the servants go everywhere.”

That’s from an interview with Checci in the February Theatre Crafts magazine--the one with the Phantom of the Opera on the cover. There’s also a piece on the Pasadena Playhouse’s resident designers, Gerry Hariton and Vicki Baral (“Mail”) and an interview with the Old Globe Theatre’s production-management team, Ken Denison and Doug Pagliotti.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: David Mamet: “If you are an actor and you can’t make yourself heard in a thousand-seat house--go home.”