Australian TV Plays: AP#1.6 - Wall to Wall (23 May 1966)

Premise

Elizabeth Fletcher, talking to the camera, reflects on her lonely life on her 30th birthday. She remembers her chances at romance, several years previously. She goes to a dance where a man pities her and takes her home, where he is "trapped" by her father, mother and her neighbour Mrs Cooper. He spills a drink on the wall to wall carpet.

She then remembers an incident after her father died. A boarder came to stay who liked Elizabeth but her mother refused to let him the room.

Then she recalls a third visit. Her mother dies and she scares off a man.

Elizabeth gets flowers. She invites the messenger in but scares him off. The flowers are from Mrs Cooper.

Cast

Heather Christie as Elizabeth Fletcher
Gwen Plumb as the next door neighbour Mrs Cooper
Lyndall Barbour as Mrs Fletcher
David Yorston as the Young Man
Don Crosby as Mr Fletcher
Barry Davies as Boy

Production

It was written by Anne Kinloch and produced by Eric Tayler. Music- Werner Baer. Technical producer - Dick Cohen. Designer - Jack Montgomery.

The play had originally been written by Adelaide writer Ann Kinloch for a 1962 competition for Channel Nine drama. However it was not used, the studio making The Valley of Water instead.

It was offered to the ABC in 1962 and turned down.

I think Kinloch was the American wife of an Adelaide academic - she wrote this piece here.

It was shot in Sydney. ABC records say it was filmed on 3 October 1965. Ausstage supports this. According to this January 1966 article about the show, the episode had been shot.

Heather Christie was an actor who also wrote radio soaps and later a play. Here is a 1987 profile. Here is a 1963 profile on her return from England after two and a bit years. She was in the 1966 stage production of The Cell.

Reception

The Sydney Morning Herald thought "the dialogue is so soften stilted and at times too obvious and the author's intentions towards characters or actions are frequently obscure so that after a while one waits for the end in the hope - this time unavailing - that something can be made out of it all."

The Age called it "a bad play... embarrassing as it bellowed and whimpered through a predictable pattern of trite tragedies... an ugly half hour.^"

Another reviewer in the same paper called it "one of the poorest of the series. The script might have been written by a schoolboy."

The Sunday Sydney Morning Herald said Gwen Plumb "gets our nod for the week's finest performance" for her work in the show.

Frank Roberts of the Bulletin called the play "the silliest of all" the episodes of the series.

The Canberra Times thought the "chief defect" was Heather Chrstie's performane.

The patience of critics for this show clearly snapped.