Another example... -- David Warner: The Forum

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Subject: Another example...

Author:
Jen again @ lunch

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Date Posted: 10:23:00 07/30/01 Mon
In reply to: Jen again (still tired) 's message, "What I thought of the play..." on 08:03:45 07/30/01 Mon

There's a line in which Barbara complains about having to wear a regular dress when she'd gotten used to an army uniform. I have a sneaking suspicion this can be funny and work as a comment on changing standards for women of the time, and once again the costumes set the stage for it (since she and her sister and her mother all appear in that scene wearing frumpy dresses). But the line is done more as a genuine complaint, leading into a harangue against her dad for ruining her life. Barbara isn't the calm in the center of the storm straight person, she really seems to have been written as someone who can be chipper but who is essentially humorless. I don't get it.

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[> Subject: Typecasting

Author:
Jen (off to bed)
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Date Posted: 21:07:39 08/01/01 Wed

I have noticed three things about this role that is typical of how people use Warner, and I was reminded because of that "20th Century relic" stuff. He is often a being from the near future in some fin de siecle context; here, too. He is playing an antagonist in the play, one of the ironies being his reliance on mental gamesmanship in his personal life when full-scale weaponry is his business. (Thuggery is left to minor male characters.) The last is the use and abuse of his charm. I wouldn't say the reviewers who take other characters' references to Undershaft as the devil or evil literally are on the money to think he's being the bad guy, but Undershaft is clearly presented as someone who manipulates people with his suavity.

That's why the nice thing (yes, meeting him wasn't a complete downer, in case you were starting to wonder) about seeing him in real life is that he smiles and there is no lousy fictional context to sour the moment.