The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 141

The Age 8 June 1991 EKTRAS Hey Hammie, to be or not to be? J-Vf5 ft mm FIRST glance and it has to 0 to be said, on many other glances the TV soap 'Neighbours' seems to offer Should today's children ditch Shakespeare? Certainly not, argues author JOHN MORTIMER. And right, FRANK BARRETT looks at Neighbours', the modern-day Shakespeare. can be equally disconcerting. Scott Robinson, for example, went off into the bush on his school journey. Scott ended up In hospital.

But It wasnt the Scott that we knew, it was somebody else Jason Donovan, as it happened. This was a plot twist, we thought; not Scott but somebody pretending to be Scott. But Indeed it was Scott: same character, different actor. When the Spanish film director Luis Bunuel does this sort of thing, as In That Obscure Object of Desire', he is hailed as a genuls but this Is routine stulf for 'Neighbours'. The show is now' on Its second Toby and about three Lucys.

Why has the program been so successful In Australia and Britain? David Plnne says it is essentially Happy Families. But when we count through the Ramsay Street families and discover only one that might remotely be called happy, he revise his observation. "If the families were all happy, It wouldn't be interesting no dramatic FrttK I HAVE a surplus of things to be 9 tnanuul lor. I wasn't born a Kurd, or on the seafront of Ban-' gladesh. I didn't spend my life In Russia and have to live through their war.

Stalin. Brezhnev and in I Tate or nor- to bm) nothing more than an unlikely plot, bad acting and a set that shakes when anybody shuts a door. But, In fact, children recognise 'Neighbours' for what It is: modern-day Shakespeare. In fact. It's better than Shakespeare.

Take brevity, for Instance. Where the Bard needs a few hours to sort out the Prince of Denmark, 'Neighbours' would do It in about half-an-hour. On Monday, Hamlet would roll up In Ramsay Street. "G'day, Hammie. What's eating you mate? You've got a face like a koala's backside." The Prince would explain that his father had been murdered and he was seeking to avenge his death (a plot-line actually used on the program).

He would also set out his amorous difficulties with Ophelia. Hamlet might agonise be or not to be. Yeah, that'd be right but by Friday, the malefactors would be under arrest. Hamlet and Ophelia would announce their engagement before heading off to Brisbane (beyond the Stygian river from which no 'Neighbours' character ever returns). Here Is the essential charm of 'Neighbours', especially for children.

Problems are nearly always resolved happily and quickly. In one memorable plot-line young Lucy Robinson was diagnosed as having a brain tumor on one day, had her operation by the end of the week and the whole episode was forgotten by the end of the next week. The past has no place In 'Neighbours'; it lives wholly in the present Once a character has left the series, writers are normally under orders never to refer to him or her again. David Pinne, the senior vice-president of Grundy Television, which produces the show, explains that talking about old characters would make the audience They would expect these characters to Even the much-loved Scott and Charlene (Jason Donovan and Kylie Minogue), who were once at the centre of the drama before buying that oneway ticket to Brisbane, are scarcely referred to by their families. Sometimes the program keeps the character and loses the actor, which Shakespeare also infused my father's work as a divorce barrister, "Oh beware, my lord, of jealousy," my father would say to the Judge when he was defending a housewife suspected by her husband of having it off with the local bank manager.

"It Is the green-ey'd monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on." Barristers are meant to be polite to solicitors who bring them work; but when one of bis solicitor clients forgot to file an affidavit I remember my father shouting at him. In the corridors of the Law Courts, "The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon!" which the unfortunate lawyer might not even have remembered was a quotation from 'MacbethV Brought up in this atmosphere, and having seen Gielgud's wonderfully sensitive and aristocratic Hamlet, and Ollv-ler's glorious and dangerous deaths (as Cymbeline he rolled down a long flight of stairs and almost Into our laps), I naturally wanted to be an actor, and performed most of the major tragedies on the stairs at home for the benefit of my mother and my father. No doubt these perfomances were somewhat strange as, being an only child, I was the sole member of the cast and had to duel with myself, force myself to drink my own poisoned chalice and lovingly rebuke myself as my own mother. Although no doubt painful to the spectators, these performances had a great advantage for me. I got many scenes and speeches by heart and I can occupy myself happily in doctors' wait-' Ing rooms, or in airport lounges or during particularly boring dinner parties, silently inviting myself to sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings.

the collapse of the economy. I was not brought up by Wee Frees, Jehovah's Witnesses or television evangelists. Of all these undoubted blessings, the one for which I feel most gratitude is that I bad Implanted Into my bead, at a sur-; prlslngly early age, most of the plays of Shakesoeare. My father, a blind barrister, knew much of these works by heart He would walk about the bouse, and whereas other men would be singing 'When Irish Eyes Are Smiling' or Ta-ra-ra BOOM-de-. ay, he would intone "Nymph in thy orisons be all my sins 1 not because he was addressing my mother, who took absolutely no notice of the suggestion, but because of the extraordinary musical quality of the line.

He would quote Shakespeare at quite Inapposite moments. When I was four, every time my father caught sight of me he used to say: execution done on Cawdor?" And that, when you're four, is a pretty tough question to have to answer. He used to take me each year to see all the plays at Stratford-on-Avon. We weren't the most popular members of the audience because he liked a five-course dinner, available In those distant days, so we never arrived in his favored seats In the front row of the stalls until about 20 minutes after the curtain rose. But when he got there my i father was of enormous assistance to the actors because he was able to say all the lines, quite loudly, at least 10 seconds before they could get to them.

he could play Othello, a work that is really a farce slowed down to a tragic speed and ending In death. I don't suppose that even the strange and misguided characters who are doubtful of teaching Shakespeare in school expect all drama to be abandoned. A new generation Is going to see movies and television plays. How can they judge them without some reference to the greatest drama ever written? How will they ever know how well the job could be done, and how much they're missing. Britain has a great deal to be proud of: the great British breakfast, the British countryside and the world's greatest dramatic literature.

In the age of muesli and bran, of motorways and multistorey car parks and pedestrian walkways, are we going to ditch Shakespeare also? God knows where the Idea originated; I imagine from some committee of educational theorists in a misguided government department. My father and Macbeth had words for them: "The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loons!" no doubt be able to pick out Falstaff and Andrew Aguecheek ana Mr Justice Shallow, while Cleopatra lights a sultry Gau-loise behind the bicycle sheds and Lady Macbeth organises the promotion of her husband to headmaster. They may also be cheered to learn that the plays contain more sex and violence than Is usually approved by the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal, and a large number of rude jokes. If the plays are inaccessible, why Is It that no other playwright, getting on for 400 years after his death, can be relied on to fill theatres with people who are carried away on a tide of perpetual dramatic excitement and don't find them in the least difficult to understand? In my view, a Shakespeare performance is in every way superior to a football match; you can sit down and, with any luck, no one will knee you In the groin. Modern dramatists know that If actors can act In Shakespeare they can perform anything.

Glelgud Is superb In modern high comedy because he was a great Hamlet, a character who, it is not sufficiently remembered, was full of jokes. Olivier could p'lay farce because All this, you may say, is very fine and large for an only child with an eccentric barrister father. But why should school- children have to go through Shakespeare now, when they've barely got -tlme for 'Lord of the Files' and '1984? And, anyway, they would be much better off writing relevant essays on the socio-political effect of 'Neighbours' on suburban existence the '90s. The truth of the matter Is that, apart from some Improvement In the plumbing and a marked deterioration in the language, there have been remarkably few changes since his plays were written. Political life Is still as boundless, the hypocrisy of governments still as brazen and the bumbllngs of minor bureaucrats still as hilarious.

If it's important to understand our fellow beings and the nature of life on earth, then Shakespeare is not only relevant but Indispensable. The idea that his characters only exist In books that schoolchildren may find hard to read is also a fallacy. They should be encouraged to look at their teachers, among whom they will In an increasingly brutal world, the benign lifestyle of 'Neighbours' Is undeniably seductive. Ramsay Street Is free of war, disease, hunger and poverty. The sun shines, the outdoor pool is always warm and, while there is no past, the future always looks good.

And it Is not Just the children who are hooked. A man In Devon has vide- taped every episode of 'Neighbours' that has been shown In Britain about sot hours of tape. Even Mr Plnne, who tries to be blase about the phenomenal success of 'Neighbours' In Britain, has to express astonishment at someone wanting to videotape the entire 'Neighbours' put Pity the Bard isn't around now Just-to find out what he's been missing. independent; ft -r? Christmas Decorations Intimacy Relationship A Somath Apptoaeh to Ptnonnwl Otvtopnttnt This It iVttriM of workshopa tor peopi who would like to enhtnee ttwlr ability to torm and maintain long ttrrn uxual rttibonships. rgardleu of Mxual preference.

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