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Clip description
The soldiers wait for their weekly designated phone call. Keghead (Tony Barry) discovers that, as usual, it’s a frustrating experience.
Curator’s notes
In Rusty Bugles, isolation and long absences from home have devastating impacts on the soldiers’ lives. Relationships with wives and fiancées break down. Focused as the play is on camp life, we see the effect of separation from family in scenes like this. The technological limitations of the period make long-distance telephone calls expensive and prone to dropping out.
This scene plays up the ridiculousness of Keghead’s phone call as a way of highlighting the helplessness of the situation. He’s waited hours to speak to his wife and then almost loses his temper at not being able to be heard or understood. The camera slowly moves in for a close-up on Keghead so we can better hear Tony Barry’s dialogue and see the frustration on his face at his failure to connect.
The camera focuses on Barry when he is on the phone, but the other soldiers remain visible in the background to remind us that he has no privacy on the army base, even when talking to his wife. Keghead has to virtually whisper his more intimate remarks (such as a request for more hair restorer). Given that the telephone connection makes it hard for her to understand him even when he’s shouting, his frustration at not getting through to her is made very clear to the audience.
