"Evelyn" started life as a radio play and was later adapted for television, being broadcast as part of BBC 1's "Play for Today" series. It deals with an affair between a middle-aged married man and a younger woman. Most of the television play is taken up with conversations between the two main characters, although there are also scenes (not found in the radio version) between the man and his wife and between the man and a male friend. We never learn the names of the main characters, who are referred to in the script simply as 'The Man' and 'The Girl'. The Man and his wife are referred to in the cast list as Frank and Jane, but these names are not used in the play itself.
The two main features of the play are The Man's insecurity about his age- he has just hit forty and constantly worries about his looks and his virility- and the complexity of The Girl's love life. She is separated from her husband, but the two are not divorced and it seems that some sort of relationship is continuing between them. Moreover, The Girl has several other lovers, all of whom she claims to love equally, while insisting that she also loves The Man and her husband. To make matters even more complicated, The Girl's lovers all seem to be equally polyamorous with several lovers of their own. (All these relationships seem to be heterosexual. Polyamory itself was a highly controversial subject in 1971, at least for television. Bisexual polyamory would have been a controversy too far).
The Man invents another mistress called Evelyn, partly so that he can compete with The Girl in terms of a complex sex life, partly because he hopes that he can persuade The Girl to commit to him by promising to leave both his wife and Evelyn. It is clear that Evelyn is an imaginary figure, whereas I think that we are supposed to accept the reality of The Girl's other lovers, if only because Angela Scoular seems too artless to have invented them. We even meet one of them briefly, a young man named Peter. In the event The Man's ploy fails because The Girl can never decide which of her lovers she prefers and because she has doubts about the reality of the supposed "Evelyn".
Plays for Today were mostly serious dramas, often based around some contemporary social or political issue. "Evelyn" does not fit this mould at all, being little more than a frothy sex comedy. It certainly does not examine the implications of The Girl's complicated lifestyle, merely treating that lifestyle as a subject for humour. The problem is that the play is not very funny either. Scoular as The Girl does what is asked of her, but Edward Woodward was capable of much better performances than the one he gives here. Perhaps that has more to do with the way in which his character is written. There is something pathetic, perhaps almost tragic, about The Man's constant need for reassurance in the face of his advancing years, but the writer Rhys Adrian never really explores this aspect of the character. A few Plays for Today have become television classics, and some have been undeservedly neglected, but "Evelyn" does not fall into either category. It is not the worst of the series, but it is also far from being among the best. 5/10.
The two main features of the play are The Man's insecurity about his age- he has just hit forty and constantly worries about his looks and his virility- and the complexity of The Girl's love life. She is separated from her husband, but the two are not divorced and it seems that some sort of relationship is continuing between them. Moreover, The Girl has several other lovers, all of whom she claims to love equally, while insisting that she also loves The Man and her husband. To make matters even more complicated, The Girl's lovers all seem to be equally polyamorous with several lovers of their own. (All these relationships seem to be heterosexual. Polyamory itself was a highly controversial subject in 1971, at least for television. Bisexual polyamory would have been a controversy too far).
The Man invents another mistress called Evelyn, partly so that he can compete with The Girl in terms of a complex sex life, partly because he hopes that he can persuade The Girl to commit to him by promising to leave both his wife and Evelyn. It is clear that Evelyn is an imaginary figure, whereas I think that we are supposed to accept the reality of The Girl's other lovers, if only because Angela Scoular seems too artless to have invented them. We even meet one of them briefly, a young man named Peter. In the event The Man's ploy fails because The Girl can never decide which of her lovers she prefers and because she has doubts about the reality of the supposed "Evelyn".
Plays for Today were mostly serious dramas, often based around some contemporary social or political issue. "Evelyn" does not fit this mould at all, being little more than a frothy sex comedy. It certainly does not examine the implications of The Girl's complicated lifestyle, merely treating that lifestyle as a subject for humour. The problem is that the play is not very funny either. Scoular as The Girl does what is asked of her, but Edward Woodward was capable of much better performances than the one he gives here. Perhaps that has more to do with the way in which his character is written. There is something pathetic, perhaps almost tragic, about The Man's constant need for reassurance in the face of his advancing years, but the writer Rhys Adrian never really explores this aspect of the character. A few Plays for Today have become television classics, and some have been undeservedly neglected, but "Evelyn" does not fall into either category. It is not the worst of the series, but it is also far from being among the best. 5/10.
