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A Very Great Man Indeed

Dates | Cast | Text | Audio

First broadcast

BBC Third Programme on 7th September 1953, 7.55 - 9.10 p.m.

Repeats

"with slight amendments" on 13th February 1958, 9.00 - 10.20 p.m.

9th September 1959, 10.00 - 11.15 p.m.

New production

Recorded on 10th April 1961 and broadcast on 17th May 1961, 8.30 - 9.40 p.m. (the different actors used in this production are indicated with an asterisk)

Repeats

24th December 1968

28th December 1987 (in memory of Douglas Cleverdon).

Published text dedicated to Hugh Burden

Cast

Text:

In his plays, Reed parodies a number of writers. In this play, he begins with a parody of Henry James:

The Hot and the Cold

[Mrs Hepple and Peter Scutcheon are discussing the death of the man they have both, in their different ways, loved.]

"But no, dear friend!" She all but breathlessly flung the small word at him; so that he, poor Scutcheon, could not fail, almost pointedly, to stare at her 'tone'.

"You could always find him if you wanted to, even though the dear fellow isn't here any more."

Scutcheon was ruefully to admit to himself for many years after that it was her fine eyes rather than her fine words that 'did it' for him: which didn't however at that moment keep him from all doubtfully putting to her:

"You could, you mean find him in —"

"Yes?", she smilingly invited.

"In the horrid mother, you mean —?", he had alll but pronounced, whene Mrs Hepple swept the horrid mother so magnificently out of the way, and with her, as Scutcheon forcible sensed, the horrid brothers and sisters as well, that it was some small minute before he, still hazily, disengaged that she had done this only to sweep them with one of her funny high gestures ever so gloriously back again.

"Then who, my dear...", he was just about to face her with, when she, instead, faced him, and quite fairly and squarely let him 'have it':

"All of them. The whole jolly lot," she radiantly brought out.

"They all had a bit of him. He was never, poor fellow, his own. They divided him — oh, but with an unscrupulousness! — among themselves. You'd only ever understand him, if, quite triumphantly, you understood the whole family as well."

"Which" — he pertinently blurted — "I almost, you know, don't".

The second parody, of Virginia Woolf:

The Quick and the Slow

This silence between them: surely it could not be allowed to go on for ever, thought Mona. But how to break it? At last, not quite looking in Rosa's direction, she said, "Did you have a pleasant walk, darling?"

Rose seemed to smoulder for a moment. Then even that sullen fire seemed to die out, and she replied firmly, "At least I did no harm. The Earl's Court Road was not disturbed in the any way by my passage along it. I went into the park, sat, watched the birds making their nests, read ten pages of Les Liaison Dangereuses, and returned as I went. I was at no point approached by any undesirable stranger."

Mona threw her arms round her sister. "Darling, don't, don't, don't...", she whispered, "...give way to bitterness. I know you think that life has passed us by. But don't be bitter, darling." Rosa gently but firmly disengaged herself, and stood up. She looked coldly down into Mona's face as into that of a stranger. Then she said, quietly and slowly, "Bitterness, Miss Mona Stanmore?...What have we to be bitter about?"

The third parody. This time, of Graham Greene:

The Arse and the Elbow

[Roderick, the young and dissolute airman, has died in action. Grace, the girl he has possibly ruined (though we are left intentionally unsure of this, of course) talks in her distress to Father Tippett, the uncertain priest, who has — again a beautiful ambiguity — failed to save him. The two characters utter their elegy over him. It begins with Grace's pathetic cry]

"But what shall I do, Father Tippett?", she asked. "Do you and look for him, my child," he replied. "Look for him, Father Tippett! Whatever do you mean? He's dead. Roddy's dead. How can you joke about such a thing?"

"Whe have all of us died in some sense or another, my dear," he said. "All of us," he added. "All of us, and all of the time," he went on, "throughout the whole of our lives...A great poet once said that...At least I suppose he was a great one...I wouldn't know any longer."

"But, Father Tippett, what use is poetry to me now?"

"This poet, my dear, was a great sinner, you might say. But he was also a little touched with sanctity. Perhaps — who knows — all great sinners are."

"Oh, I don't understand all this, Father Tippett. I only know..." She stopped, as if she didn't quite know what it was she only knew. The rain still poured down. Father Tippett waited for her to go on — you had to wait with the young, however thirsty you were — you couldn't just send them away.

"I don't understand," she said. "I don't understand," she repeated.

"None of us, except God, can understand everything, my child. And He...well, it's an old commonplace — we can only pray it's a true one — to understand all is to forgive all...And perhaps God forgives all..."

Wondering what more there was to say, he scatched his groin furtively, then remembered and stopped. He looked down at the young up-turned face, and pity twisted his dry mouth and stomach; it doesn't matter if they are pasty-faced so long as they're young. What a bad priest he was.

"Go out and look for him, my child." He had said that before, but it was lamost as if he wasn't saying the words himself.

"But where, Father Tippett? He's dead."

Suddenly he seemed to know what it was he had to say to her, though he couldn't have told anybody why. He said, "We live in others, my dear. And the greater we are the more we live in them. And Roddy — Roderick — well, Roddy was perhaps a very great man indeed."

Supported by backstage.bbc.co.uk

© Chris Goddard, 30 October, 2006