A television adaptation of Michael Frayn’s stage comedy, set in the chaotic cuttings library of a provincial newspaper.
In the cuttings library of a provincial newspaper, the mercurial Lucy (Jennifer Hilary) presides over a state of near-terminal disarray. Her world of haphazard piles and comfortable mess is challenged by the arrival of a new assistant, Leslie (Janine Duvitski). Leslie is a model of quiet efficiency, and she immediately begins to impose a rigid, systematic order on the library’s contents. The play charts the conflict between Lucy’s bohemian approach and Leslie’s methodical nature, as their colleagues, including the cynical journalist John (Lewis Fiander) and the elderly Nora (Jane Wenham), look on.
This television version brought Michael Frayn’s celebrated stage comedy to a wider audience. Frayn, drawing on his own past as a journalist, uses the newspaper cuttings library as a potent setting for a comedy of competing philosophies. The central conflict between the anarchic, free-spirited Lucy and the compulsively organised Leslie becomes a metaphor for the struggle between chaos and order. The production is not about the grand events reported by the newspaper; it is about the people tasked with filing away the first draft of history. The library is a microcosm where the untidy, unpredictable nature of life is contrasted with the human instinct to classify, contain, and control it.
Broadcast: ITV – Granada, 1 Episode, 17 September 1978
Written by: Michael Frayn
Director: John Irvin
Producer: Peter Eckersley
Designer: Roy Stonehouse
Main Cast: Jennifer Hilary (Lucy), Jane Wenham (Nora), Janine Duvitski (Leslie), Lewis Fiander (John), James Ottaway (Geoffrey), Anthony Pedley (Arnold), Hubert Rees (Wally)
