- Paperback: 60 pages
- Publisher: Samuel French Ltd; New edition edition (May 1978)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 057311109X
- ISBN-13: 978-0573111099
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,501,256 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
When you see the name Stoppard, you expect supremely intelligent, scalpel-sharp drama and comedy. In the case of these twin one-act plays, written for and on behalf of Ed Berman, we see the great man twinning Whitehall farce with historical absurdity and a flight of fancy about the USA.
Dirty Linen may date back to 1976 but in terms of its analysis of political sleaze it is bang up to the minute. Our latest parliamentary scandal might have related to expenses, but it could so easily have been the sexual mores, peccadillos and hypocrisies of MPs, to wit members of a committee established to investigate the moral propriety of Parliament in the light of allegedly scurrilous press rumours and the grave risk to the reputation of our democratic institutions.
The comedy within DL is extracted at will from Stoppard's dazzling verbal wit and dexterity, notably double-entendres and tongue-twisters by the score, but especially the progressively desperate attempts of all committee members to cover up the fact that they have been dating the same woman - the temporary secretary of their committee, who for farcical purposes is gradually reduced down to her underwear - at various restaurants around London. And being MPs, they materially fail to spot their own culpability, the capacity for self-deception being the rapier with which Stoppard skewers his victims.
By contrast, New Found Land pairs a senior civil servant with a hoary tale about Lloyd George knowing his father, with a young bureaucrat whose poetic passion for all things American surfaces only when he launches into a 5-page monologue about a journey by train across the USA. As an amateur actor, performing this speech in public would complete my career and leave me happy to retire!
Dirty Linen may date back to 1976 but in terms of its analysis of political sleaze it is bang up to the minute. Our latest parliamentary scandal might have related to expenses, but it could so easily have been the sexual mores, peccadillos and hypocrisies of MPs, to wit members of a committee established to investigate the moral propriety of Parliament in the light of allegedly scurrilous press rumours and the grave risk to the reputation of our democratic institutions.
The comedy within DL is extracted at will from Stoppard's dazzling verbal wit and dexterity, notably double-entendres and tongue-twisters by the score, but especially the progressively desperate attempts of all committee members to cover up the fact that they have been dating the same woman - the temporary secretary of their committee, who for farcical purposes is gradually reduced down to her underwear - at various restaurants around London. And being MPs, they materially fail to spot their own culpability, the capacity for self-deception being the rapier with which Stoppard skewers his victims.
By contrast, New Found Land pairs a senior civil servant with a hoary tale about Lloyd George knowing his father, with a young bureaucrat whose poetic passion for all things American surfaces only when he launches into a 5-page monologue about a journey by train across the USA. As an amateur actor, performing this speech in public would complete my career and leave me happy to retire!
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Kind of dirty lingerie about sexual laundering
27 Oct 2001
Format:Hardcover
The three plays are a whole, due to the same setting.
The first part of Dirty Linen is a farce about a Select Committee appoinbted by the PM (Prime Minister) to investigate the allegations of immoral conduct concerning some MPs. It is turning the whole procedure into a sham, a silly attempt. First the final report is written before the Committee meets. Second the well- named secretary, Ms Gotobed, gets undresssed little by little and reveals she has slept with literally hundreds of people in order to become some permanent sub-Secretary of some type. Third the whole report amounts to refusing the press's allegations as unfounded, but without any real investigation. It is a biassed and plain cover-up operation.
The second part turns the whole thing upside down. The first part was in perfect agreement with common practices in Great Britain : to hunt down the politicians who have non-politically correct sexual activities. The second part is a dream for Great Britain, with a new report introduced by a certain well-named MP, Mr French, rejecting all allegations in the name of the protection of the privacy of MPs against the right to know of the public. This is a dream for Great Britain, all the more ironical because it is the French principle : private life is more sacred than the freedom to inform. It is beyond limits for this right to inform.
The small play in-between those two parts is a long reverie on America described by a civil servant dealing with the application of an American for British citizenship, just because he is American. It is purely boring and lacks humor or fun.
This play is a famous one by Tom Stoppard. Its only interest is that it tackles a real political problem, but this problem is so trite that the play sounds like a complete waste of time.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
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