Filmic structures are always tricky on stage. David Mamet, an exception, can get away with writing long chains of scenes that last a couple of minutes each. But the theatre prefers to relax, to snuggle down, to linger slowly over every morsel of a many-layered spread. Encountering a screenplay on stage is like receiving a box of Milk Tray in a restaurant and being told it’s a 32-course meal.
David Gooderson’s made-for-TV script concerns an Edwardian sex scandal featuring teenage boys and lauded grandees. Sir Hector MacDonald (aka Fighting Mac) was a crofter’s son who enlisted as an infantryman and reached the rank of major-general during a 20-year career. To rise so high without a private income was pretty rare in Britain’s gentry-loving military. Fighting Mac was posted to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to serve as General Officer Commanding and it’s here that we first meet him. And what a pest he is.
He’s a chippy, moralising disciplinarian, and his chief talent is for barking orders at nervous subalterns and refusing the offer of a wee drinkie on the verandah.
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