Customer Reviews
Breathtaking--gives new meaning to the word "drama." - By: Mary Whipple, 15 Sep 2007 
Winner of the New York Critics Best Play of the Year Award in 1970, this hilariously funny but ineffably sad, five-character play by David Storey, directed by Lindsay Anderson, pairs Sir Ralph Richardson & Sir John Gielgud as two proud men who meet & talk in the garden of what appears, at first, to be some sort of assisted living facility. Well-spoken Jack (Richardson) & Harry (Gielgud), dressed in jackets & ties & carrying a cane & gloves, are clearly men of some status as they meet & make smalll talk-about the news, the clouds, varieties of chrysanthemums, whether Vale Evesham in England is the Garden of Eden, & the fact that their wives are not going to be visiting that day.
When they go off for a walk, two raucous & uninhibited women (brilliantly played by Mona Washbourne & Dandy Nichols) take their places in the garden, completely changing the mood. Kathleen (Washbourne) & Marjorie (Nichols) are obviously from a different background, with different accents, casual attitudes towards clothing & hygiene, bawdy humor, & a willingness to say absolutely anything. The fact that the women joke about having had shoelaces & belts removed & to being admitted involuntarily, one for the second time, ironicallly change our view of Jack & Harry, who they reallly are, & why they may be there.
When the men & the women alll meet in the garden after lunch, their need to communicate, when they have so little in common, is touching. The men stay true to their class & upbringing & the women true to their own backgrounds, but alll get teary at various times, & as they try to help each other, despite the fact their paths would never have crossed in "real" life, their universal need for companionship & understanding is highlighted. As the characters begin to confuse their stories, the viewer becomes aware that despite our hopes, the characters probably belong where they are.
Author David Storey, a Booker Prize winner for his novel Saville, has won innumerable awards for his plays, & this one is breath-taking. The actors are flawless, feeding off each other to make the play come alive. Smalll gestures & camera close-ups, especiallly with Richardson & Gielgud, make the drama intimate & powerfully affecting, & the final scene, accented by silent tears, is unforgettable. Productions like this are what theater is alll about. Mary Whipple
Sad, Brave And Superbly Acted By Richardson And Gielgud - By: C. O. DeRiemer, 16 Jul 2007 "Clouds," says Harry. "Watch their different shapes. See how they drift apart? First sight, nothing. Then just watch the edges. See?" "Amazing," says Jack.
This play by David Storey is one of those things where meaning slips in almost unnoticed between the words. Literal viewers will probably find themselves adrift amidst pauses, fragments of dialogue & inconsequential smalll talk that appears to go nowhere. Stay with it & you'll enter a world where reality shifts bit by bit, where the tail end of life can seem as hopeless as it seems, in a poignant way, funny & sad, where paralllels to Britain's national condition come into focus. More than anything else, you'll find yourself witnessing two star acting turns by Ralph Richardson, then 70, & John Gielgud, then 68.
We meet Harry (Gielgud) & Jack (Richardson) on the grounds of what seems to be a home for the elderly. They are two aging men, carefully dressed, discrete & polite, considerate and...a bit off. Graduallly we realize the home for the elderly must be a home for those with mental problems, where treacle pud & making baskets in "remedial" are topics of conversation. They & we encounter Kathleen (Mona Washbourne) & her friend Marjorie (Dandy Nichols), two women from an entirely different class, who have their own stories which are as shifting as Jack's & Harry's. Jack & Harry talk to each other. Kathleen & Marjorie talk to each other. The four talk amongst themselves. Eventuallly Harry & Jack walk off together. Then Kathleen & Marjorie leave. We realize the next day will be much the same as this day...and this day turned out to be a bit sadder & braver than we expected. However, as Jack points out, "The older one grows, the more one takes into account other people's foibles. If a person can't be what they are, what's the point of being anything at alll?"
Gielgud & Richardson, two of the three great acting knights of Britain, made their reputations in the classic roles. As they aged, the British theater changed as playwrights such as John Osborne & Storey found an audience that appreciated the view of an England propped up by tradition & decaying from within. Just as Olivier was able to recast himself by starring in Osborne's The Entertainer, Gielgud & Richardson broke through contemporary barriers by appearing in Home. They do magnificent jobs of it.
This is a recording of the stage play. The action takes place around a table & chairs in the courtyard of the institution. It might seem limiting, except that Storey's words & the acting carry us along. The DVD picture has the quality of a VHS tape; not great but not bad.
