Australian TV Plays: Rain Before Seven (26 September 1954)

Australian play performed on British TV.

Premise

Described as follows: Queensland in December: the temperature is 115 degrees in the shade, the land is parched, and the cattle are weak; in the hot blue of the sky no cloud loiters with a promise of rain; and only the hopeful, stubborn courage of the pioneer sustains the farmers in their proud belief that they are working ‘God’s own country.' It is an epithet which has a doubtful ring to the young bride out from Eng-land. Beginning a new life with her farmer husband in conditions separated by a polar distance from those she has known in her comfortable English home, Stella wilts amid the ‘alien corn’. The odds seem against her...'

Cast

* Vincent Ball as George Grant
* Maureen O’Reilly as Stella Grant
* Marjory Clark as Mrs Francis
* Leal Douglas as Mrs Robinson
* Gordon Gostelow   as Stan Farmer
* Anthony Hawtrey   as Monty Dalziel
* Yvonne Jacques as    Doris Francis
* Gillian Lutyens   as Emmie Dalziel
* Irene Richmond as Mrs O’Neil
* Ewen Solon as Ted O’Neil
* Roy Sone as Jimmy O’Neil
* Nancye Stewart as Mrs Edwards

Original play

Based on a play by Englishwoman Joyce Dennys who lived in Australia from 1919 to 1921. She was better known as a cartoonist, illustrator and painted but also wrote plays, mostly for amateur performance.

Presented at the Arts Theatre, London, in June 1936. It was Maurice Denham's London stage debut. I think it ran for two performances.

A description of the action: Act one shows the slow-moving, easy, safe and thoroughly comfortable home surroundings of the heroine’s family in Devon. The rest of the play, two acts and an epilogue concerns the hard life of an Australian farm. The rough-and-ready women of the little settlement laugh at the English girl’s clothes and mannerisms, jeer at her “English accent.” express their horror at her nude statuette, and, generally. pre diet her failure as an “Empire-builder.” She, for her part, is distressed by the crudity of the people and the surroundings, wilts under the strain of the heat and the work, and spends most of her time longing for the arrival of the mail from Home. Eventually, she decides to leave her husband and “run away” back to England. Her love for her man brings her back, and she surprises everyone-including the audience-.by “sticking it.”

The epilogue shows what happened when war broke out in 1914. The husband decides to join up, and leaves for the West. The English wife packs up his things in a state of ecstasy (“it’s like an epic poem!”) and, bravely fighting down her own feelings of loss, lets hun go. So it is he who leaves for England, and shel who stays in Australia to keep the farm in order.

Production

Sunday 26 September 1954. 8.30-9.45pm.

It was produced by Chloe Gibson. Designed by Stephen Taylor.