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Clive Exton's dark but often hilarious satire was broadcast on 13 September 1964 - some two years after its intended
transmission. Despite the approval of the regulator, the Independent Television
Authority, the broadcaster, ABC, feared that the play would cause offence, in
particular a scene in which one witness's pronounced stammer is cruelly
mocked by the defence barrister.
Like Alun Owen's 'The
Rose Affair' (ITV, tx. 8/10/1961), 'The Trial of Dr Fancy' is evidence that
many writers were losing patience with the social realism that had come to
dominate British film, theatre and television drama since the tail end of the 1950s. "I
became very dissatisfied with realism," Exton said later, "I didn't think
my realistic plays had captured what I wanted to say".
Exton and director Ted
Kotcheff take a bizarre scenario and play it straight, following it to its
logical conclusion. The eponymous doctor (John Lee) is charged with
unlawful killing after an apparently unnecessary double leg amputation results
in the death of the patient. It emerges that the doctor has performed hundreds
of such operations to deal with the 'Cyclops syndrome' - a psychological
condition supposedly suffered by tall people who are embarrassed by their
height. Fancy's radical solution is to amputate both legs below the knee; he is
supported in this approach by gentlemen's outfitter Pender (Peter
Sallis), who has dedicated his business to producing trousers for the
shorter customer. A number of expert witnesses testify to the doctor's
astuteness and integrity, and ultimately the doctor is acquitted. When the
members of the jury rush to congratulate him, it becomes obvious that they are
all satisfied former patients.
Exton's theme is conformity,
and Society's hostility to and ridicule of those who differ from its ideas of
normality. The play shares its tone with the contemporary Theatre of the
Absurd associated with dramatists like Eugene Ionesco, Edward
Albee and Samuel Beckett, and indeed Exton's play has been
compared with Ionesco's Rhinoceros, another work dealing with the
herd mentality.
In a strange case of life imitating
art, just as 'The Trial of Dr Fancy' was being recorded, reports emerged of
Swedish doctors performing surgery for 'psychological reasons' on patients
worried about their 'excessive'
height.
Mark Duguid
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1. Dr Harmon's testimony (1:43)
