The picture opens with a rather "Casablanca" like WW2 waterfront dive, where everyone looks like they're auditioning to become Nazi spies, or British Intelligence. So far okay. Then we see a man clad only in a diaperlike wrap around, ninety per cent nude. He is covered from head to toe with horrible sores. I knew something different was about to happen, because even in standard TV disease movies they don't shock the viewers with scenes this repulsive. The man turns out to be a mystery writer, afflicted with a fiedish type of psoriasis, and the opening spy scene is a chapter from a book he is writing. This is autobiographical, as Dennis Potter suffered, and died from this disease. There are so many plots and subplots going on that I'm not sure I could map it out. It's about Potter's childhood, the every day day nitty gritty of writing, a husband/wife can't live with, can't live without'em (Gambon/Suzman) infidelity(Malahide/ Suzman) and something I will not forgive Potter for, the hackneyed scene that never happens in therapy, where the psychiatrist says, "That's it! You've been suppressing it for years." And the paralyzed patient gets up and walks. Balderdash. Never has happened, never will. Okay. Except for the standard shrink nonsense, I'm compelled to call this the greatest production of this kind I have ever seen. To me, it's only rivals are Ken Finkleman's "Newsroom", and "More Tears". The entire production is woven with Potter's trademark. At certain intervals the characters break out and lip sync to the hit records of the forties. I'm not ashamed to say I found myself sobbing over the pop tunes of my childhood.(Crying for my lost youth?) The performances? Can you have bad performnces with Michael Gabon, Janet Suzman, Patrick Malahide, Jim Carter, Joanne Whalley, Allison Steadman, and Bill Paterson? No. They are the elite of the British stage. When not doing a movie, they're acting every night in the theatre. Miss this masterpiece at your own peril.
Review of The Singing Detective
