"To Be or Not To Be" was also a British
TV series in the 80s. It was shown on ITV.
The main theme is anorexia and the way it affects families. The series opens with a girl aged about 17 coming home from boarding school - she claims this is so she can revise for a major Latin exam, but in fact she asked to come home to get away from the lack of privacy at school. Her name is Lizzie, short for Elizabeth, and she is her mother's favourite, head girl at her school, and has a place at Cambridge (the best university in Britain, except Oxford - if you're aiming for the top, people say you'll go to "Oxbridge") - in short, the perfect academic achiever. It is indicated that she used to be an outwardly pleasant, hardworking and happy person, but throughout the series she alternates between shy, closed in evasiveness and sudden outbursts.
Her elder sister, Maggie, short for Margaret, is taking a mechanics course that her mother disapproves of as she considers it unladylike. She is easy going and doesn't understand the change in her sister. She is the first to suggest anorexia as the cause of the change and critizes her mother for pressuring Lizzie into working do hard.
Their mother, Mrs Robertson, is a well-meaning but often misguided woman, seemingly unable to accept Maggie's choice of career. She is very concerned and confused at the way Lizzie keeps her distance, and outraged when in one of Lizzie's outbursts she claims "You never loved me, either."
There is one more character, Andrew, who used to be friends with Lizzie before her mental illness began. He is an entirely decent person (Mrs Robertson wholeheartedly approves of him, and invites him round without telling Lizzie in advance in the hope he will be able to get through to her.) He is as lost as Maggie and Mrs Robertson are by the new Lizzie.
Her illness is clear to the viewers, since there are scenes showing Lizzie measuring her waist with a tape measure, binging and throwing up. The series ends with Lizzie and Mrs Robertson returning from a doctor who has diagnosed Lizzie with anorexia. There follows an emotional scene in which Mrs Robertson expresses her frustration and fury at Lizzie's earlier claim that her father (who left them when they were young) was the only one who'd ever loved her. Lizzie begs her mother to help her recover and says "It's not about dad". Hugging and crying finally end the series.
The screen play is available with three others in a book called "Challenges". It's near-impossible to do on stage without altering some of the props, scenery and so on (how are you meant to get a car on stage?) but it can be worked out quite nicely.
(Personally, this play annoys me hugely, because I have to act Lizzie and she gets lines like "I mean, do I really exist or am I just something you've all made up?" and "I love you.. I love you all.. I just hate me.. the way I am.." that I can't do convincingly, because I just can't see into her mind. I'm also meant to have a ocncave stomach, and I'm thin but not -that- thin. Aside from my personal grudges though it's not a bad play and probably made a good series.)
(Also - My apologies for the lack of detail on who originally acted in it, who wrote it etc - it wasn't a huge success and I haven't found much information on it, but I will find out more about it when I get a copy on Monday.)