Unman, Wittering, and Zigo

by Giles Cooper

Ideal for the English classroom and the Drama Studio. The sophisticated themes and complex plots have been specifically designed to appeal to 11-16 year olds, and have a language level accessible to all pupils.

Genres: Plays, Theatre

98 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1971

About the author

Giles Stannus Cooper, OBE was an Anglo-Irish playwright and prolific radio dramatist, writing over sixty scripts for BBC Radio and television. He was awarded the OBE in 1960 for "Services to Broadcasting". A dozen years after his death at only 48 the Giles Cooper Awards for Radio Drama were instituted in his honour, jointly by the BBC and the publishers Eyre Methuen.

[With thanks to Wikipedia]

Reviews

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

The play is a thriller set in a traditional boys boarding school where a senior form master has just
been killed in a tragic accident. The main character is John Ebony, a teacher in his first job, brought
in as a temporary measure, though one he hopes will be confirmed as permanent. Between his rebellious wife Nadia, the eccentric art master Cary Farthingale and the class of Lower 5B, Ebony struggles to exercise power, but is thwarted by reality and a disbelieving Headmaster. The resonant quotation from the play falls to the wise old Farthingale.

"Authority is a necessary evil, and every bit as evil as it is necessary."

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Back in the spring of 1971 I played, in the Dulwich College 4th Form Drama Competition, the part of the nervous, young teacher, John Ebony, who suffers at the tongues, hands & vices of his 4th form class, in this play for rampant teenagers. My classmates of 4L (L for Latin!) had a field-day with me during rehearsals & practice readings etc. as I was, ahem!, comprehensively, the brightest star in the firmament of this second-level swots & academic hopefuls! (Less teacher's pet...more eminence grise or agent provocateur!). So the biggest part went to me...a Michael Caine impersonator but with longer eye-lashes & a big...ego to match! (In the film of U.,W.,&Z. in late 1971...David Hemmings played Ebony...& the foxy Carolyn Seymour, his wife, who stimulates a very unhealthy response from the vicious 'men' as pupils at the private school are known!). To read this again, & pick-up on all the uncanny similarities to my later, and all-too-brief, teaching career, was quite harrowing. (My first job at a single-sex state comprehensive school in Surbiton in 1982, was as a temporary replacement for the previous victim...he suffered a nervous break-down!...brought-on by the evil 4th year class!...I merely resigned after one term of misery!).
I remembered many of the lines, much of the horse-play with my boisterous mates from all those years ago...Nige Davis, Simon Pinkney & the memorable Palmer J.!...and re-lived the whole, single 20+ minute performance before nearly 200 of my peers!...to be put firmly in my place by the adjudicator, Mr McDowell, with a comment on my 'mumbling...indistinct but very realistic'...& the end, for a few years, to my thespian aspirations! Mr McD. blew my bloody doors off!...and not many people have done that!
Sinister & unpleasant though the play is, it reads well enough. Watch the film on YouTube!

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting play. Just a little short.

[Nomad nimrod · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting.