The Contractor

Just got this from the Broadway Theater Archive. This dates from a golden period of PBS, when they were doing first-rate productions of plays that there would be no record of otherwise. David Storey was a particularly important British playwright of the seventies. His novel This Sporting Life was also made into a first rate film of the early sixties that made Richard Harris a star. This play involves men setting up a tent for their employer's daughter's wedding. Through their activities we see the inner hopes, dreams, and disappointments of both employers and employees in how they interact with each other, and in how they treat a mentally retarded fellow worker (a great performance by Kevin O'Connor).