#earliest had in fact been in 1959 in play Hot Summer Night‚ tho interestingly it was Lloyd Reckord locking lips in both instances) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mariocki · 2 years

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Second City Firsts: Club Havana (BBC, 1975)

"When you have just arrived in a dangerous country like Birmingham, you got to examine all about you. You got to secure your rear. And you notice them carrying the bread, in their dirty hands and in the baby carriage!"

"It's a beautiful slum, like Kingston."

"What, sir? No. Kingston is blue and green! This is concrete and dogshit - and drizzle."

#second city firsts #club havana #single play #bbc #classic tv #barry reckord #pamela brighton #don warrington #mona hammond #julie walters #frank singuineau #alfred fagon #tara prem #most often referred to these days in terms of being the screen debut of national treasure julie walters #but that's a disservice to an urgent and challenging play that promotes black voices in an era which rarely did so on mainstream television #where SCF often concentrated (admirably) on emerging talents and new writers‚ Reckord was already a well established figure at this point #albeit with little success in television. as a stage writer‚ however‚ he'd been working since the mid 50s‚ often with his actor director #brother Lloyd. one significant success had been the Royal Court staging of Barry's play You in Your Small Corner‚ which granada had #adapted for tv in 1962 and which was long believed to feature the first interracial kiss on british television (it later emerged that the #earliest had in fact been in 1959 in play Hot Summer Night‚ tho interestingly it was Lloyd Reckord locking lips in both instances)#Reckord had also written a Play for Today in 72 but Club Havana was his third and final attempt at breaking into tv; he returned instead to #play writing and the stage for the rest of his life. as in Small Corner‚ this play concerns (although perhaps less centrally) an #interracial romance; it's tempting to look for elements of autobiography (Reckord was in a long and unconventional relationship with the #white novelist Diana Athill‚ and like his protagonist hailed from Kingston) but there's little to connect Walters' burnt out barmaid with #Athill's vibrant academic‚ nor in Don Warrington's teacherly ambitions (Reckord had been writing full time almost from his student days)#to the difficult relationship between a blinkered mother and naive son i can say less; regardless‚ Hammond gives a powerhouse performance #as she so often did. a challenging play as i said and comes with the caveat that the language used is often shocking to a modern audience #indeed I'm quite surprised at how much Reckord slipped past the bbc censors. but it feels genuine and human and it works #my mother caught some of this as i watched and did not enjoy: 'just a lot of shouting' was her summary. but hey sometimes that's life #and when a play works like real life it works well

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