HE TIMES WE LIVE IN

Last Tuesday's 'Play for 1 c. -11-1 oaay BBC I was "The Operation', written by Roger Smith and directed by Roy Battersby.

It concerned a ruthless property speculator, David Adler (George Lazenby), who destroys not only the centre of his old home town, but also the lives of a number of middle-class people who cannot stand up to the power of his wealth.

As Adler says, when he makes flm profit in a week: "That's real magic'.

Adler epitomizes 'success'. He's rich, worldly, and bursting with confidence. He has a television set in his Rolls, a luxurious country. home in Ireland, thick wads of banknotes and he dispenses expensive presents with easy grace.

He frequents gambling casinos, has a more than nodding acquaintance with gangsters and conducts his operations from a luxurious suite of offices. He has no difficulty at all in gathering up a grocer's wife (Maureen Shaw) in the old home town-she offers herself in something under two-and-a-half minutes.

The emptiness of middle-class life is portrayed by the fawning of the local citizenry on the powerful Adler who might drop them a few crumbs, by a decadent houseparty and the casual, bored wife-swapping.

The grocel, indeed, seems to be remarkably obliging in the matter of his wife's lovers, but he is enraged when his little shop is to be demolished to make way for Adler's speculative building. He refuses to sell up.. He swears defiance at Adler.

But this is not typical BBC drama, where the courageous little man wins out against the powerful and corrupt. The grocer doesn't stand a chance. All Adler needs is a compulsory purchase order from the council. And when that requires a little rule-bending, well, that's soon arranged.

A prominent council official is wined and dined and offered a substantial money • bribe. When he shows signs of refusing cash, an obliging young lady is wheeled in. A combination of her 'charms' and Adler's camera does the trick -the next shot shows the grocer's shop being demolished.

The grocer is driven beyond endurance by the loss of the shop which is the centre of his small life. He bursts in on his wife and her lover and kills them both. (He catches them in the middle of a sado-masochistic episode which apparently explains the hold which the dull, plain, middle-class wife has on the worldly Adler.)

Much of the action is seen through the eyes of George, an old schoolmate of Adler's, played by Tom Kempinski. Adler apparently needs George as a kind of witness to his triumphs. As George says: 'He calls me over from time to time to signify some change in his material progress.' George is an individual drop-out. He has walked out of his university job and left his 'lady wife and two odious children'. He lives on the dole and occasional hand-outs from Adler.

He is presented as someone who rejects the life Adler has chosen.

He is antagonistic and cynical towards Adler in the early scenes, appears to feel genuine affection for the tycoon's mistress and walks out in disgust when Adler humiliates her during their Christmas holiday together at his cottage in Ireland.

But just as the middle-class grocer's fierce possessiveness can't protect his business, so middle-class individual protest can't be successful either. Despite his distaste, George hangs around, finally going on to Adler's pay roll at £100 per week to keep his mistress entertained.

The play portrays not only the ruthless determination of capitalism, but also the impotence of the middle class.

Even the wiping out of Adler by murder basically alters nothing. In the final scene George tells us that the shares of Adler Enterprises dropped briefly at the news of his death, but soon recovered when it was realized that business went on as usual.

Adler's new block of offices, says George, is standing 'empty and profitably waiting' while rents and land values rise, and a Sunday newspaper has paid handsomely for 'The David Adler Story'.

Then he drives off in a shiny new car, leaving us to infer that it is he who sold the As the play's epilogue said: •Any resemblance to places or persons living or dead, is a sign of the times we live in.' Above: George Lazenby as David Adler Maureen Shaw as the gro. with aro. cer's wife, Diane Hardin in a scene from "The Operation'. Below: Tom Kempinski as George.