Proteus

New Zealand Listener, Volume 41, Issue 1051, 16 October 1959, Page 16

Proteus

| MISSED The Grand Prix of Gibraltar on Showcase recently, and it was therefore a great pleasure to pick it up on ZB last Sunday afternoon. What a performance! Peter Ustinov, of celebrated Russian parents and English education combines in his personality the warring ingredients indispensable for wit and comedy; add to his heritage ears’ with the sensitive detection of radio antennae, a wickedly accurate eye for incongruities of behaviour, and you have a unique bag of tricks. But The Grand Prix has more even than this. His show is no mere stunt; his observations on national characters, revealed through his protean voice, capable of assuming any accent or timbre, are not only shrewd and witty, but genuinely touching as well. This, for example, when in his guise of American newscaster, thrilled to the marrow with the historical associations of the great event,

he interviews the French contingent on its chances of success. The Frenchman replies, in a tone of melancholy satisfaction: "It’s not so important whether we win or not, but-many will lose." What more vivid illustration of the defensive role of the French in modern Europe? So to the plums. The wonderfully bumbling speech of the Governor, mixing all sports into a wild ragéut: you could see that old bag of bones, tottering on the podium, drawing any stray fact from the capacious wastebasket of his memory; the Germans, formidable, plaintive and authoritative, obsessed to madness by the physical problems of standing for the Duke of Edinburgh with their drivers’ legs extended fore and aft at 180 degrees; the darkly saturnine and stonewalling Rus- ' sian, the touchy and voluble Spaniards and Italians, the British Public Relations smoothies, and finally-piéce de résistance for me-the affectionate and wholly endearing account of the arrival of the Duke of Edinburgh, in triplecoloured Morris Minor, like Noddy (Parp! Parp!) hurtling into the tunnel and emerging first in the field, casting over the occasion the aura of inspired amateurism which belongs unmistakably to His Royal Highness. Hardly space now for admiration at the astonishing virtuosity of the engine noises, all Ustinov’s own, just time perhaps for one note of criticism: that in an hourlong show, the plot of the Grand Prix ambled too much and was without an effective climax. But what a display! No wonder Ernest Bevin, after a Jong day at the Foreign Office would summon Ustinov to amuse him. Truly, he is a/|

prince of entertainers.

B. E. G.

M.