The Philanthropist

Excelling in wit, timing and cleverness, Christopher Hampton's "The Philanthropist" is deceptively light and satirical, so for the first half or so of Stuart Burge's TV adaptation I was amused but kept at a distance by all that craft. Yet the seemingly artificial and extreme title character (terrifically played with perfect sense of timing by Ronald Pickup) eventually provided some dark points of identification for me, and I felt quite moved up until the return to cutesy light-heartedness at the end.

Hampton is delightfully making fun of conversationalists -those raconteurs one encounters at parties or who used to be a fixture when I was growing up on TV talk shows like Jack Paar, later Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin and Dick Cavett. The Ashley Montagus, Alexander King and various intellectuals no longer on the booking rosters of the current Jimmys.

So stealing the show is the inimitable Charles Gray as an acerbic but highly successful author, not meant to be a Kingley Amis type but he might as well have been. His cynicism, nastiness and generally horrible nature is astounding to listen to, but of course the unique Gray, in a role just before he did the "Rocky Horror" film, raises it to classic status.

His verbal adversary is Pickup who plays a professor of philology who is so agreeable, or seems to be at first glance, so noncommittal as to appear to be an intelligent buffoon. He plays off the other characters especially his best friend fellow prof James Bolam in verbal sparring matches where he is inherently always the loser, and once the opening scene's very black and morbid comedy is out of the way, he is a bit hard to take, perhaps accounting for the play's failure on stage when starring the likes of (talented but not in Pickup's class) Alec McCowen and more recently Matthew Broderick.

The DVD revival of this masterwork is pegged to the supporting role of Helen Mirren, in her thriving stage career post-showy film roles for Michael Powell, Ken Russell and Lindsay Anderson. She is a beautiful, natch, foil for Pickup and her presence some 40 years later as I watched helped generate sympathy for Ronald since in retrospect he is up against perhaps the most successful actress in her particular range. Their final scene together is immensely moving and worth waiting for after the more shallow ones preceding it.

Special mention should be given to the ultra-sexy performance by Jacqueline Pearce in a rather strangely written nymphomaniac role. I had seen her many times making a good impression in everything from Hammer Films to "The Avengers" with Patrick Macnee, but this sexpot is how I will remember her.

The only fault with "The Philanthropist", way too late for a decades-after rewrite, is that Hampton sabotages the heart of the work by way too much emphasis on showing off. Entertaining to be sure, but the more he piles on with social criticism and satirical characterizations the more distance he establishes between the characters and the viewer. I have several (thank God not too many) of The Philanthropist's traits, notably taking everything literally, so I began to identify with him, but simply imagining a Boulevard comedian like Broderick in the role (or any of the great French stars in a Moliere vein like Pierre Mondy or Michel Serrault) I could see where a well-adjusted audience would slough the character and the play off as merely mildly amusing.

The Philanthropist is Christopher Hampton's witty and incisive reversal of Moliere's Misanthropist. According to Hampton 'it occurred to me that in the climate of abrasive candour which characterised the late 1960's, Alceste would have been quite at home: whereas his opposite, a man concerned above all to cause no offence and be an unfailing source of sweetness and light, would very likely succeed only in raising heckles where-ever he went'.

Thus we have the impeccably mannered Ronald Pickup falling over himself to be pleasing and honest, and instead finding that honesty is taken as a subtle form of insult and that to be pleasing is to be unfashionable and rude.

This BBC adaptation, made in 1975, is superb and superbly cast. Pickup is a wonderfully self-absorbed philanthropist, reminding one of Humbert Humbert without the crime. James Bolam is perfectly cast as Don, ostensibly Pickup's friend, but finding how easy it is to dupe the innocent quite without design. Of all the actors only Helen Mirren fails to come to grips with her role, possibly because she is miscast, rather than misreading the part of Celia.

This great play is included as part of the Helen Mirren At The BBC DVD box-set. I do not really understand the fashion for releasing these plays as sets under the umbrella of an actor - much more useful would be a box-set of Christopher Hampton At The BBC. It's his play, Mirren just happens to be in it.

THE most essential play of the 60's and 70's. And shame on the BBC for leaving it unseen in the archives for 33 years.