Maureen Lipman"It’s going to be wonderful."
It's hard to disagree with Maureen Lipman. Not because she's terrifying and argumentative – quite the opposite in fact – but because she's summed up how most of us will feel about the release of five of Jack Rosenthal's finest plays on DVD.
A new box set celebrates Rosenthal's BBC career: The Evacuees, Bar Mitzvah Boy, Spend Spend Spend, Eskimo Day and its sequel Cold Enough For Snow. "Which is going to be fantastic for everybody who’s written to me over the last 20 years asking 'where can I see Eskimo Day again?'" says Maureen with a laugh.
"Jack always championed the underdog, and tended to be political in a non-political way. In Spend, Spend, Spend you’ve got (pools winner Viv Nicholson) someone that everybody regarded as a spoiled, lower class, 'grabby' celebrity – the first of the great media manslaughters – but Jack showed that she was an abused child, he gave her reasons for being who she was, after the money changed her life.
"The Bar Mitzvah Boy was a real breakthrough. I don’t think anyone thought or considered what a Bar Mitzvah was, so in a way - in much the same way the Muslims are now, where we’re fascinated by East Is East and Slumdog Millionaire because it’s another world - I think Jack opened the doors. It wasn’t entirely what they wanted the world to see but it was done with such affection. Even in The Evacuees, the foster parents who wanted to break the children of their smothering Jewish traditions and their mother love, Jack gives them a reason, he’s gentle and understanding with their motives."
While it's tempting to see most of the plays as autobiographical, Maureen points out that it's not the case. "The Evacuees is autobiographical, but the passage of boyhood to manhood in The Bar Mitzvah Boy was a way of showing that boys and children need role models, and that the role models he saw he had no admiration for. People are flawed and that was his passage to manhood. It was to do with understanding. These people have not been trained in the art of parenting, they were just doing the best they can. That was in a way Jack's passage to becoming a father, a grown up, himself. It had a profundity about it – plus the fact that it’s screamingly funny with wonderful performances from everyone in it." Maureen laughs. "And I can say that because I’m not in it."
As well as being a reminder of Jack Rosenthal's talent and humanity, the box set is an interesting reminder of Play For Today. Maureen doesn't think it's a format that will ever return, but makes a convincing case for a comeback.
"The cinemas are packed, because people want to see something that starts and finishes in the same night. The King’s Speech would have been a Play for Today. So would The Queen, Frost Nixon...
"But it's great that the BBC have finally managed to put these out. They're award-winning BAFTA plays. The Evacuees won an Emmy. But more than that, it’s a complete cycle of Jack’s oeuvre. It covers the whole spectrum of his humanity.
"He touched a chord in so many different ways. He seemed to have a great understanding of the downtrodden." Maureen laughs. "He said there was no such thing as a boring person: if they were that boring that would actually be quite interesting..."
Happily, while some of the plays in question are nearly 40 years old, they've more than stood the test of time.
"I showed The Evacuees to my great niece and nephew," reveals Maureen, "and they were completely rapt. It was thrilling. And it was interesting to see myself as well. I was playing my mother-in-law, and I’d just had a child, and it was a me I didn’t know existed really. It was really wonderful."
The Evacuees, Bar Mitzvah Boy, Spend Spend Spend, Eskimo Day, and Cold Enough For Snow were released on DVD as a part of five-disc boxed set,'Jack Rosenthal at the BBC' on 4 April 2011.