Peter Shaffer’s grainy play in two parts, The Private Ear The Public Eye, illustrates the mood and modus operandi of the 60s so well that it should be viewed in black and white! First shown in 1962 it has all the hallmarks of the time, taking place firstly in a shabby bedsitter belonging to old-fashioned music obsessed Bob, and then in the stuffy city office of Charles, the city gent complete with bowler hat, neatly illustrating the juxtaposition between the Establishment and the newly emerging ‘Swinging Sixties’.
Steven Blakeley gives us bumbling Bob, clad only in his underpants (that was the word in those days, no fancy names like boxers etc)., in a fever of nerves getting ready to receive his first date girlfriend for dinner, helped in this venture somewhat unadvisedly as it turns out, by his trendy and garrulous cockney wide boy friend, Ted. Rupert Hill does a great job of making Ted full of bouncy cockiness and unassailable self-confidence, tempered by the rather grubby morals of the modern young man – you know no good will come of him. The dinner is to be served at a rickety table immediately at the end of the bed, with chairs of assorted sizes, tinned soup to start – how can Doreen, Bob’s dream woman, fail to be impressed? Enter Doreen played by Siobhan O’Kelly, slender and mini-skirted, wrapped in a fur coat nervously clutching her never-to-be parted from handbag.....
At the start of the second act, the transformation of the stage from bedsitter to London office and Bob to Julian Cristoforou cleverly takes place in what seems like seconds before your eyes, it’s a show in itself and a lesson in the art of teamwork! Jasper Britton strides in as Charles Sidley, the suave city accountant with a problem, as well as the one of finding a scruffy little man in a battered raincoat eating macaroons in his office when he least expected it. Jasper Britton is magnificent and exactly captures the crusty and irritated Mr Sidley, who for all his life has expected deference and control and is damned if he is going to change now. Stephen Blakeley comes into his own causing much amusement as the private detective Julian Cristoforou, a sort of clumsy Inspector Clouseau of the private detective world. Siobhan O’Kelly this time plays Belinda, Charles’s much younger and pretty wife fending off accusations of unfaithfulness although confessing to a secret admirer, but who is he?
The two plays are fun, and very much of their time, the first act was a little slow but the second more than makes up for this and the excellent cast of four entertain to the end.
Jacquie Vowles