BLEACH
by Arnold Meyer
Directed by Mike Custance
Cast:
Alan Chisholm, David Morris, Michael Noakes
THE AUTHOR
Arnold Meyer was born in New York and came to England in the hope of having his plays produced. Bleach, written in 1968, was his first play and its appearance at The Questors in 1971 appears to have been its first public production.
An American one-act play for two principal characters, with the brief appearance of a Vietnamese boy, Bleach places the Vietnam War within a broader study of personal and environmental contamination. The programme’s untranslated pleas from the Vietnamese prisoner—asking to be allowed home and not to be hurt—indicate the violence lying beneath the encounter, while James Saunders described the play as being “about pollution, more or less”. Film sequences formed part of the production, linking the private confrontation on stage with the larger imagery and moral consequences of the war.
PHOTOS
Arnold Meyer’s study of two American conscripts in Vietnam produced widely contrasting reactions. N.H. in Amateur Stage considered it the most rewarding play of the Festival, praising the sincerity and economy with which it showed friendship and moral values disintegrating under the pressure of an unjust war. N.S. in the Brentford & Chiswick Times admired Meyer’s crisp, penetrating dialogue and the performances of Michael Noakes and Alan Chisholm, who conveyed the panic and helplessness beneath the soldiers’ camaraderie. An unidentified local review was similarly impressed by the integration of film and live action and by the personal tragedy surrounding the accidental killing of a Vietnamese boy.
Other critics felt that the play offered little that was new. Garry O’Connor in the Financial Times acknowledged Meyer’s ear for emotionally charged dialogue and found the production involving, but questioned the use of Vietnam as an artistic vehicle after such extensive treatment elsewhere. L.G.S. in The Stage found the characters and outcome predictable, while Walter Lucas in Drama Quarterly attacked the play as a collection of fashionable clichés expressed through banal and repetitive dialogue. The inserted documentary film was also disputed: some reviewers considered it effective and atmospheric, while Amateur Stage thought it added little and might make the play less practical for other companies to stage.
Amateur Stage
The Stage and Television Today
The Financial Times
The Staines Chronicle
The Brentford and Chiswick Times
Anon
QUESTORS ARCHIVES
BLEACH