`Empires' Strikes
Out; On `Masterpiece,'
a Soggy Vaudeville Saga
Even Alistair
Cooke looks a bit sheepish about introducing the
latest "Masterpiece
Theater" entry, "Lost Empires," which begins its
seven-episode
run tomorrow night at 9 on Channel 26 and other
public TV
stations. Cooke marvels that J.B. Priestley was 70 when
he wrote the
book on which the serial is based. To judge from the
filmed version,
he should have stopped at 69.
Damp and chilly
as English manners, "Empires" has milieu
aplenty but
nothing more. It is set among vaudevillians who
perform in
theaters (often named "The Empire") in the years 1913
and 1914,
with the war guns booming, literally in one scene, in the
distance.
A way of life is coming to an end and a callow youth
growing into
manhood. It's all been said and done before, and
much
more convincingly than here.
The youth
is played by the contagiously sedentary Colin Firth, who
is dreary
enough skulking about on camera, but downright
soporific
reciting the overexplicit voice-over narration ladled on by
adapter
Ian Curteis.
Newly orphaned, the lad signs on as
apprentice
to his nasty Uncle Nick (John Castle), an insufferable
misogynist
who considers all women "tarts" and likes to bully
midgets. On
stage, Uncle Nick is a pseudo-swami called Ganga
Dun who does
half-baked magic tricks. If only he could make
himself disappear,
and take "Lost Empires" with him.
The slim story
is padded out with variety numbers, including the
obligatory
rabble-rousing recruitment tunes sung by beckoning
chorines.
"Empires" opens and closes with such routines,
seeming to
have stolen them directly from "Oh! What a Lovely War,"
the stage
and screen show about England's naive entry into the
hellish conflagration
at hand. A song featured in "War," Jerome
Kern's "They
Wouldn't Believe Me," is rudely included in "Empires," too.
Three supposedly
fascinating women figure in the hero's minstrel
life: Carmen
Du Sautoy as the moody Julie, Gillian Bevan as the
moody Cissie
and Beatie Edney as the moody Nancy. Moody they
may be,
but they certainly outclass Firth in the old esprit
department,
and you do wonder what they see in this sodden blob
of protoplasm.
Part 1 is fitfully
enlivened with appearances by Laurence Olivier as
an impossibly
seedy old has-been called Harry G. Burrard, whose
every performance
is greeted with catcalls, jeers and sometimes
by tossed
vegetables from the surly throng. Olivier is reprising the
role he played
in the film version of "The Entertainer," more or less,
but he radiates
hokey brio. Alas, he expires in Part 1 of this
desultory
downer. "Lost Empires," produced by Granada
Television,
is "Minorpiece Theater," at best.
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Copyright ©1987
Washington Post
