The Curse of Steptoe - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

The play covers the entire history of the televised series, skipping over the five-year break between 1965 and 1970 when no episodes were recorded. It starts with Corbett, then a rising Shakespearean actor, starring as Richard II at Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, looking beyond that to Henry V at the Old Vic, and tipped to eclipse Gielgud. Meanwhile, across town at the BBC Television Centre, writers Galton and Simpson have parted from their longtime star, Tony Hancock, and are given a free hand. They write a series of one-off plays starring actors, not comics who will expect every line to contain a laugh.

The Offer, in which they cast Corbett in his first television role, is wildly successful and evolves into an uneasy, decade-long comedy partnership between Corbett and the alcoholic, self-loathing homosexual Brambell. Corbett's stage career fades quickly from typecasting, and his first marriage to comic actress Sheila Steafel suffers from his womanising, while Brambell's drinking and his relaxed approach to acting cause conflict between him and Corbett, a method actor once described as "the British Marlon Brando". Off-screen, Brambell is secretive and dislikes the trappings of fame, and his worst fears are realised when, entrapped by a policeman in a public toilet, he is prosecuted for persistently importuning for an immoral purpose, and the details of his failed marriage are published in the newspapers.

The show, and the actors' careers, are milked dry. Corbett is unable to obtain work that is not a variation on his cockney rag and bone man persona. At the start, Corbett as Richard II had spoken the words "I wasted time and now doth time waste me," and at the end he says them to himself as he awaits his cue in a live recording of Steptoe and Son. Finally Corbett is depicted as unable to find any work except pantomime or a stage version of Steptoe in Australia. This, however, was untrue, as Corbett appeared in several films in the late 1970s. They also implied that Corbett was reluctant to partake in the tour when it was in fact his suggestion. The idea was put to him by a theatre producer. Having then contacted Wilfrid Brambell to see if he was available, it was Corbett who put the idea forward to writers Galton and Simpson, not the other way round as the writers fictionalised in the show.