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Inadmissible Evidence
Dedication to previous owner inside front cover. Jacket is worn around edges but otherwise clean and well preserved. It has been price clipped. Slight spotting on front and rear pages. Contents otherwise clean and sound.
96 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1965
About the author
John Osborne
257 books112 followersPeople best know British playwright John James Osborne, member of the Angry Young Men, for his play Look Back in Anger (1956); vigorous social protest characterizes works of this group of English writers of the 1950s.
This screenwriter acted and criticized the Establishment. The stunning success of Look Back in Anger transformed English theatre. In a productive life of more than four decades, Osborne explored many themes and genres, writing for stage, film and television. His extravagant and iconoclastic personal life flourished. He notoriously used language of the ornate violence on behalf of the political causes that he supported and against his own family, including his wives and children, who nevertheless often gave as good as they got.
He came onto the theatrical scene at a time when British acting enjoyed a golden age, but most great plays came from the United States and France. The complexities of the postwar period blinded British plays. In the post-imperial age, Osborne of the writers first addressed purpose of Britain. He first questioned the point of the monarchy on a prominent public stage. During his peak from 1956 to 1966, he helped to make contempt an acceptable and then even cliched onstage emotion, argued for the cleansing wisdom of bad behavior and bad taste, and combined unsparing truthfulness with devastating wit.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
May 22, 2023
Pedantic! At first, I thought it was funny the way he would ramble on and not really answer the questions of the judge. But 112 pages of this is a lot, and it gets boring very quickly. I'm sure it translated much better on stage, but as a read, it's not good.
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December 6, 2018Few characters could be more disparate than Archie Rice, Martin Luther, Bill Maitland, and Jimmy Porter. Yet they all share this: the world into which they were born no longer works for them. Osborne details, in a variety of time settings and situations, the plight of the man who doesn’t fit. These are not easy plays, but they are important.
October 29, 2017
Meet Bill Maitland, protagonist of John Osborne's massive play Inadmissible Evidence. Bill, a 39-year-old lawyer, is not that likable a guy but seems to have his pick of the ladies. The pursuit of women has become a lifestyle for Bill, who has a wife and several mistresses both short and long-term, as well as opportunistic encounters. But this certainly isn't a sex comedy. It is more of an indictment. Bill is to be tried and found guilty -- though less for his sexual appetites than for his utter disregard of every single other's personhood.
John Osborne turned British theater on its head in the 1950s with his brilliant play Look Back in Anger, featuring the definitive "angry young man" character Jimmy Porter. Osborne early in his career wrote among the most punishingly large male roles in the entire world dramatic literature -- Porter, Archie Rice in The Entertainer, Luther in an eponymous play. With Maitland, Osborne pushes this line of inquiry as far as it will go; Inadmissible Evidence takes three to four hours to perform, the lead actor is onstage continuously, and is given any number of three, four, and five page speeches to execute. On top of all that, the actor is playing a self-justifying creep who has barely a single appealing moment and whose last big monologue is a cruel and incestuously tinged rejection of his teenage daughter. One critic of the play's premiere production in 1964 noted that the play has "no plot, no action, no interesting situations, no climaxes and no comedy...not even a clever set to look at." I know this all sounds horrible, and yet, such is the nature of the challenge Osborne set himself, to write a masterpiece (it has to be a masterpiece or nothing) within those boundaries. He pulls it off.
In reading and viewing Osborne, a book I am finding very helpful is Luc Gilleman's John Osborne -- Vituperative Artist. Gilleman states that "in many ways, Inadmissible Evidence is a bad play," but I would say that if so, it falls into the category of "bad great play" that Kenneth Tynan proposed for Camus's Caligula. (One might say that Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is a bad great film -- you get the idea.) One "badness" of the play is that it probably relies too heavily on a great central performer to really work up there on stage. Osborne was terribly lucky to have the incomparable Nicol Williamson as Maitland in that first production, and many times subsequently; Williamson played Maitland in a total of five separate productions in London and New York, and in a little-seen 1968 film version. This was a signature role for him, and he was by all accounts mesmerizing in it; one gets a little of the flavor in the photographs that accompany the 1965 Grove Press printing of the play. Gilleman writes:
In playing Maitland, Williamson in fact seemed to die on the stage every night and was not adverse to berating the audience when it proved unworthy of such a sacrifice. Once he stopped the performance...starting again only when fidgety spectators had been cowed into silence. In another instance, he staggered off stage with chest pains, and the curtain lowered, until, sixteen minutes later, his understudy took over. After the interval, Williamson returned to complete the play and in a curtain speech offered the audience their money back, explaining the role was "terribly, terribly difficult," and, since he had been suspected of sustaining a heart attack, quite literally "killing."
Of such incidents are theatrical legends made -- and the performing history of Osborne's theatrical oeuvre offers a number of others of like kind. Still, actors love the challenge. As Osborne himself noted:
[My work] requires very proficient actors. That is why they are very difficult to cast. They require a great deal of pure acting skill of a very special kind, I think...[The actors] must have an extraordinary technique as far as using the dense text, because it always is very dense. Also, they must have a wide intellectual grasp and tremendous pure verbal facility and a great ear and stamina and a lot of power and feeling.
Nothing much to ask for!
John Osborne turned British theater on its head in the 1950s with his brilliant play Look Back in Anger, featuring the definitive "angry young man" character Jimmy Porter. Osborne early in his career wrote among the most punishingly large male roles in the entire world dramatic literature -- Porter, Archie Rice in The Entertainer, Luther in an eponymous play. With Maitland, Osborne pushes this line of inquiry as far as it will go; Inadmissible Evidence takes three to four hours to perform, the lead actor is onstage continuously, and is given any number of three, four, and five page speeches to execute. On top of all that, the actor is playing a self-justifying creep who has barely a single appealing moment and whose last big monologue is a cruel and incestuously tinged rejection of his teenage daughter. One critic of the play's premiere production in 1964 noted that the play has "no plot, no action, no interesting situations, no climaxes and no comedy...not even a clever set to look at." I know this all sounds horrible, and yet, such is the nature of the challenge Osborne set himself, to write a masterpiece (it has to be a masterpiece or nothing) within those boundaries. He pulls it off.
In reading and viewing Osborne, a book I am finding very helpful is Luc Gilleman's John Osborne -- Vituperative Artist. Gilleman states that "in many ways, Inadmissible Evidence is a bad play," but I would say that if so, it falls into the category of "bad great play" that Kenneth Tynan proposed for Camus's Caligula. (One might say that Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is a bad great film -- you get the idea.) One "badness" of the play is that it probably relies too heavily on a great central performer to really work up there on stage. Osborne was terribly lucky to have the incomparable Nicol Williamson as Maitland in that first production, and many times subsequently; Williamson played Maitland in a total of five separate productions in London and New York, and in a little-seen 1968 film version. This was a signature role for him, and he was by all accounts mesmerizing in it; one gets a little of the flavor in the photographs that accompany the 1965 Grove Press printing of the play. Gilleman writes:
In playing Maitland, Williamson in fact seemed to die on the stage every night and was not adverse to berating the audience when it proved unworthy of such a sacrifice. Once he stopped the performance...starting again only when fidgety spectators had been cowed into silence. In another instance, he staggered off stage with chest pains, and the curtain lowered, until, sixteen minutes later, his understudy took over. After the interval, Williamson returned to complete the play and in a curtain speech offered the audience their money back, explaining the role was "terribly, terribly difficult," and, since he had been suspected of sustaining a heart attack, quite literally "killing."
Of such incidents are theatrical legends made -- and the performing history of Osborne's theatrical oeuvre offers a number of others of like kind. Still, actors love the challenge. As Osborne himself noted:
[My work] requires very proficient actors. That is why they are very difficult to cast. They require a great deal of pure acting skill of a very special kind, I think...[The actors] must have an extraordinary technique as far as using the dense text, because it always is very dense. Also, they must have a wide intellectual grasp and tremendous pure verbal facility and a great ear and stamina and a lot of power and feeling.
Nothing much to ask for!
May 2, 2018
The right play at the right time...and maybe in the right place? This was a big success. Acclaimed by the critics, after its short run at the Royal Court it transferred to the West End and eventually to Broadway. John Osborne was still the trendiest of British dramatists at this point: Look Back in Anger had placed him as the first of a new wave of young playwrights and he was still seen as the best – it was after Inadmissible Evidence that his reputation went into decline. Inadmissible Evidence is dominated by its central character and needs a dynamic central performance – and it got it in the young Nicol Williamson: Osborne proclaimed him the finest actor since Brando and he seemed to be the most promising British actor of his generation. But Nicholson burnt himself out and I’m not aware that Inadmissible Evidence still has its reputation – at least it doesn’t seem to get revived. Notably when it was originally transferred to Broadway the play was respected, but wasn’t quite the success it had been in London: it didn’t resonate with its audience in the way it had done in England. And, I admit, I’m a little puzzled why it had such a big impact. Bill Maitland, the central character, is a solicitor in his early middle age: he has a wife, daughter, mistress, he drinks heavily and his life is collapsing. In the early 1960s British society was going through one of its periodical rejections of its stuffy past conservatism and pretending to welcome a bright modern future. Maybe Maitland was identified with the past, but while he might be unlikable and at a dead end, he is hardly stuffy. But, for whatever reason, Inadmissible Evidence did resonate. Formally the most interesting thing might be the way it moves between naturalistic reality and fantasy and the borders are uncertain...which reflects Maitland’s state of mind. But I don’t know if I would call the play a character study, it doesn’t analyze Maitland’s break down – it’s more a big, formless splurge of consciousness. I’m not certain what it is doing...or trying to do, other than rampaging along until it finally runs out of steam. As such, the form of the play perfectly reflects the central character.
August 2, 2019
The play in written form is a little hard going but a few drolleries along the way make the reading worthwhile.
April 2, 2016
I don't think I've found a more illustrative example of a play so lifeless and bland and dead on the printed page that explodes so vividly into life once in the hands of great actors.
And that's why, despite my two-star rating for this play as written, I would still highly recommend reading it, and then proceeding posthaste to view the 1968 film version starring Nicol Williamson, the British actor who created the play's main role on stage in 1964. Williamson is so inexpressibly magnificent in the role of Bill Maitland, a self-loathing middle-aged lawyer whose life is collapsing, that I believe he should be co-credited with John Osborne as the play's co-auteur. Williamson and the cast make this property sensational and moving, and very profound and sad. (To Osborne's credit, this screenplay is his own adaptation, and I think it improves on the play).
The problem is, the 1968 film version is very, very, very hard to find. (Do I have a copy? Of course I do.)
In Williamson's hands, Maitland comes off as both more monstrous and more humane than on the written page. He is irredeemably misogynistic, crass, bullying, a hypochondriac, and fully self aware of his self-destructive tendencies. As a sexual harasser, Maitland puts Don Draper to shame. He's also aware that his desire for traditional love will always remain just that, a remote yearning that he will never attempt to grasp or realize. In the process of his self-immolation, Maitland drives off everyone in his life who ever had any modicum of feeling for him.
As there are many changes from play to film, this necessitates a read of the play first. Obvious changes from the play to the film are evident early on. The opening "trial" scene with Maitland's rambling mad polemical monologue goes on for many pages in the play but is cut down drastically for the film. The movie shuffles scenes and adds some domestic ones to better establish more traditional narrative linearity and context for Maitland. In the play, almost all of the scenes take place in Maitland's law firm. The film opens up to include other locales. I think the film does a good job in this regard.
Because the play is short, and doesn't quite have enough material to support a full feature film some padding has been added, including a sex scene and a gratuitous striptease. One of the "edgy" moments in the play and film involves Maitland's interview of a gay client, arrested for soliciting an undercover policeman, at a time when homosexuality was still considered a crime. Apart from the obvious sadness of this, I picked up an interesting parallel between Maitland's trial and the gay man's plight, since both of them seem resigned toward punishment.
Maitland's own trial, the play and film imply, is not to be taken literally. Maitland is trying himself in his mind and psyche, with everyone in his life as the accusers.
For fans of British kitchen-sink realist movies (this one was produced by Woodfall, the company that made many of the greatest British realist films of the '50s and '60s) this uncompromising gritty little black-and-white entry is highly recommended. (I would give the movie a 3.5 out of 4 rating).
Watching how the actors bring this text to life is a real master class in the art.
As for the play, I was pleased to find an original Grove Press paperback, and, yes, I did manage to find at least one typo, something I always expect from old Grove Press editions.
(KevinR@Ky 2016)
And that's why, despite my two-star rating for this play as written, I would still highly recommend reading it, and then proceeding posthaste to view the 1968 film version starring Nicol Williamson, the British actor who created the play's main role on stage in 1964. Williamson is so inexpressibly magnificent in the role of Bill Maitland, a self-loathing middle-aged lawyer whose life is collapsing, that I believe he should be co-credited with John Osborne as the play's co-auteur. Williamson and the cast make this property sensational and moving, and very profound and sad. (To Osborne's credit, this screenplay is his own adaptation, and I think it improves on the play).
The problem is, the 1968 film version is very, very, very hard to find. (Do I have a copy? Of course I do.)
In Williamson's hands, Maitland comes off as both more monstrous and more humane than on the written page. He is irredeemably misogynistic, crass, bullying, a hypochondriac, and fully self aware of his self-destructive tendencies. As a sexual harasser, Maitland puts Don Draper to shame. He's also aware that his desire for traditional love will always remain just that, a remote yearning that he will never attempt to grasp or realize. In the process of his self-immolation, Maitland drives off everyone in his life who ever had any modicum of feeling for him.
As there are many changes from play to film, this necessitates a read of the play first. Obvious changes from the play to the film are evident early on. The opening "trial" scene with Maitland's rambling mad polemical monologue goes on for many pages in the play but is cut down drastically for the film. The movie shuffles scenes and adds some domestic ones to better establish more traditional narrative linearity and context for Maitland. In the play, almost all of the scenes take place in Maitland's law firm. The film opens up to include other locales. I think the film does a good job in this regard.
Because the play is short, and doesn't quite have enough material to support a full feature film some padding has been added, including a sex scene and a gratuitous striptease. One of the "edgy" moments in the play and film involves Maitland's interview of a gay client, arrested for soliciting an undercover policeman, at a time when homosexuality was still considered a crime. Apart from the obvious sadness of this, I picked up an interesting parallel between Maitland's trial and the gay man's plight, since both of them seem resigned toward punishment.
Maitland's own trial, the play and film imply, is not to be taken literally. Maitland is trying himself in his mind and psyche, with everyone in his life as the accusers.
For fans of British kitchen-sink realist movies (this one was produced by Woodfall, the company that made many of the greatest British realist films of the '50s and '60s) this uncompromising gritty little black-and-white entry is highly recommended. (I would give the movie a 3.5 out of 4 rating).
Watching how the actors bring this text to life is a real master class in the art.
As for the play, I was pleased to find an original Grove Press paperback, and, yes, I did manage to find at least one typo, something I always expect from old Grove Press editions.
(KevinR@Ky 2016)
April 25, 2011
A play that centers on solicitor Bill Maitland, a man who stacks up mistresses by the dozen, has a bad word to say about most people he meets and who hates his business and employees. He is obsessed with recalling every woman he's ever known. Throughout, he forces his assistant to listen to his bile, observe him juggling his wife, long-time girlfriend, daughter and casual encounters, only to suddenly become a professional when a client walks in. At some point the reader becomes aware that while Bill claims to have no respect for most people, he desperately tries to keep them from leaving him.
This play was first performed in 1965 with Nicol Williamson as Bill and Peter Sallis as his assistant. Osborne was responsible for the enormous change in British theater nine years before, by writing the first "kitchen sink" drama, Look Back In Anger. While this play had nowhere near the impact of Anger, it is very much his voice coming through, and I'll bet Williamson did something amazing as Bill. 3.5 stars
This play was first performed in 1965 with Nicol Williamson as Bill and Peter Sallis as his assistant. Osborne was responsible for the enormous change in British theater nine years before, by writing the first "kitchen sink" drama, Look Back In Anger. While this play had nowhere near the impact of Anger, it is very much his voice coming through, and I'll bet Williamson did something amazing as Bill. 3.5 stars
December 22, 2012
Recommended by a friend who liked the movie version of another of Osborne's plays. Didn't care for it as much as I expected. More like a monologue of a self-centered guy falling apart, family, work, mistresses. . . Maybe if I'd read it 20 yrs ago it would have seemed fresher. . .
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews