"The Elephants' Graveyard" was the second of three "Plays for Today" written by the Scottish playwright Peter McDougall for the BBC in the 1970s, the others being "Just Another Saturday" and "Just a Boy's Game". Like "Just a Boy's Game" it is set in and around McDougall's home town of Greenock.
There is not a lot of plot, and only two characters. Two men, Bunny and Jody, meet one morning in the hills above Greenock. They spend the day wandering through the hills, drinking wine (straight out of the bottle) and talking. It emerges that both men are unemployed but are afraid to admit the truth about their situation to their wives and families, so pretend to have jobs. Bunny, claims to be a postman, Jody to be a factory worker. In order to maintain their pretence, they have to disappear from home every day, and spend their supposed working hours wandering the streets or the countryside or, if the weather is bad, sitting in the local library. It also appears that Bunny had to get married young, before he was able to support a wife and family, because he got his girlfriend pregnant.
Jody is the older of the two men, probably supposed to be over forty. (In 1976 Billy Connolly would still have been in his early thirties, but that beard made him look older). He is also more philosophical than Bunny- he has been described as a "working class philosopher"- and sums up the condition of the British working class in the seventies. (I say "in the seventies", but his words still ring true today).
"You get neither chance nor choice. You leave school and straight to work without even thinking about it. Then you get married without even knowing about it. Then spend the rest of your days using both as an excuse for never have done anything with your life".
In the mid-seventies Connolly was one of the rising stars on the British entertainment scene, even if at this period he was perhaps better known as a stand-up comedian than as a dramatic actor. (It was around this time that I first remember him, doing a brilliant routine on the "Parkinson" show on television). Here, in one of his early forays into acting, he shows that he also had great talent in that direction, and there is another very good performance from Jon Morrison.
Some have seen an element of the supernatural in the play, interpreting Jody as Bunny's alter ego, his older self from a few years later, still in the same predicament but able to treat it with a greater philosophical detachment. This is certainly one possible interpretation, and it is strengthened by the fact that, apart from the beard, there is a certain physical resemblance between Connolly and the clean-shaven Morrison. It is, however, not the only possible reading of the play; it may be unlikely that two men should meet who are playing exactly the same trick on their wives, but it is not beyond the bounds of possibility, and it is left open to us to see Jody as a real, and separate, individual. McDougall never commits himself either way. Perhaps it is well that he does not; this is one of those occasions where ambiguity is more fruitful than certainty. Despite the sparseness of the plot, this is a first-rate play. 8/10.