#set‚ the action concerns the titular characters played by Scales and Routledge‚ mid level filing clerks in an unspecified national company‚

[mariocki]

Six Plays by Alan Bennett: Doris and Doreen (1.2, LWT, 1978)

"I still wonder about Mrs. Henstridge. She did have a daughter, doesn't she? She was in an accident. Or did she get married? I know the hat came round."

"They wouldn't send the hat round for a daughter, her daughter never worked here."

"They send the hat round for famine victims, and they don't work here."

"They send the hat round for all sorts these days. I hope they send the hat round for me when my time comes. If it isn't a wedding, it's a famine. Earthquakes practically twice a week these days. Never stops. Ethiopia, what have we got to do with Ethiopia?"

"I just have this feeling I chipped in for a spread."

#doris and doreen #six plays by alan bennett #alan bennett #single play #1978 #lwt #classic tv #stephen frears #prunella scales #patricia routledge #pete postlethwaite #joan sanderson #george fenton #tony wharmby #this second play in the series is much more traditionally theatrical than the first; essentially a two hander confined to a single studio #set‚ the action concerns the titular characters played by Scales and Routledge‚ mid level filing clerks in an unspecified national company‚ #who spend their days reading newspapers and making passive aggressive digs at one another rather than work on the forms they so abhor #it's a character piece‚ with sparkling dialogue brought beautifully to life by two actors that Bennett would work with on stage and screen #repeatedly (Routledge in particular became a familiar collaborator and was an intrinsic part of what made Talking Heads so successful) #Doris is a vaguely bitter single woman who cares for an ailing mother while Doreen is a comic grotesque‚ a vapid married woman who chatters #incessantly about forced rhubarb and the lives and loves of colleagues she barely knows; for all that‚ the two are very similar in some #aspects of disposition‚ particularly in their middle class snobbery and their disinterested attitude to their work. the looming spectre of #a potential interloper in the form of a new boss (part of dreaded staff shake ups) is treated with near gothic levels of horror and #paranoia (with the film really leaning into those visuals for the rather hysteria tinged ending). it's a note of elevated style that's both #clever and quite witty but i still think this works best when it's quietly deconstructing these two frustrated characters as inflated #clerks with delusions of importance. endlessly tripping off long monologues about particular paperwork or obsolete filing systems #or sniping among themselves about best practices and working to rule; underneath the breezy comedy there's very little sympathy or #compassion in Bennett's piece (even the late Pete Postlethwaite's union minded ancillary worker is depicted as a crude bore and a hypocrite #undeniably a funny play and as sharply written as any of the playwrights works‚ but it lacks the heart that furnishes his best scripts #also the score is weirdly obtrusive whenever it kicks in‚ often playing over lines of dialogue as tho poorly mixed in