An Australian Playhouse from Richard Lane.
Premise
A man, Fred Taylor, investigates the disappearance of a friend, Pete Hayes. He talks to the missing man's wife Laura and daughter Gena, unaware the daughter is insane.
Gena shoots Fred dead.
Cast
- Terry Aldred as Laura Ogilvy
- Dennis Miller as Fred Taylor
- Veronica Casey as Gena Ogilvy
- Edward Howell as George Kidman
Production
It was written by Richard Lane and directed by Patrick Barton, presumably in Melbourne.
Technical producer - Bob Forster. Designer - Cas Van Puffelen. Producer by Patrick Barton.
Reception
The Sydney Morning Herald called it "an effective suspense play."
The Age felt that, like many Australian Playhouse scripts there was "insufficient time to develop the theme adequately" but thought "the acting was of the same high quality that characterised all the plays in the series."
The Canberra Times said the production "was marred by weak sound, especially in voice production, and there was a singular lack of emotion and reaction from Mrs Laura Ogilvie (Terry Aldred), the mother of the piece" adding "although this play was no masterpiece, it does show that plays can be written for the ABC if they are professionally enough done on those once-taboo subjects, insanity and sex, and "gotten away with" even if they have to be judiciously censored for family viewing."
The Bulletin said the play "creaked in almost every joint. It is bad when the viewer knows that a character moving toward a door is going to pause on the threshold and utter a Significant Statement before he or she exits. As for the significant shotgun blast off set, followed by a re-entry, and the question, “Is he dead?” what could be more pitiful? One can only remark that ABC Television producers are the world's most stubborn in refusing to learn anything from other producers and directors in their own medium. With such direction as one sees in much of “Playhouse,” even a good script would look bad. "
Why did they give Frank Roberts a job?
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| The Age 2 June 1966 TV Guide |
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| SMH TV Guide 6 June 1966 TV Guide |
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| SMH 7June 1966 p 6 |
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| Canberra Times 7 June 1966 p 13 |
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| The Bulletin 18 June 1966 p 56 |
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| SMH 2 April 1966 p 13 |
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| The Age TV Guide 14 April 1966 p 1 |
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| The Age TV Guide 2 June 1966 p 2 |
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| SMH 20 Jan 1966 p 29 |
Forgotten Australian TV Plays: Marleen, What About Next Year? and The Runaway
by Stephen Vagg
December 20, 2021
Stephen Vagg’s series on forgotten Australian TV plays looks at three different ones from 1966: Marleen, What About Next Year? and The Runaway.
The year 1966 is an interesting one in small screen Australian drama. Television had been broadcasting here for a decade and had established itself as the leading entertainment medium in the country, supplanting radio and cinema. It hadn’t been a great decade for local shows – in fact, sometimes it had been downright poor – but the success of programs like Homicide and Mavis Bramston proved that not only did Australians enjoy something homegrown, they could like it in large numbers. Quotas for local drama were introduced in 1967, but prior to that, the ABC increased its already decent output. This essay looks at three television plays from 1966. ..
What About Next Year?
This was another from the first season of ‘Australian Playhouse’. The script was written by Richard Lane, a rare Australian TV writer from this period who I actually met; I interviewed him in 2000 about my biography on Rod Taylor. Lane had worked with Rod during the radio days and wrote a superb book on the history of radio drama that was very useful. His wife was actor Lynne Murphy, who recently passed away, and who appeared in the third play discussed in this article. I remember they were very kind, very funny and had a dog who was very prone to humping the legs of visitors.
Lane mostly worked for commercial stations during his radio and TV career. I’ve read a few of his radio scripts, particularly impressed with The Remittance Man, about a broken down English actor in Australia… this was a terrific script that would have made a good radio play, and might have if the ABC had given the job of running TV drama to Leslie Rees, someone who cared about Australian writing, rather than Oxford blow-in Neil Hutchison, who actively campaigned against local writing throughout his career, despite more than thirty years of working on the dime of the Australian tax player to promote Australian culture.
Lane’s TV credits include soaps like Autumn Affair, Young Doctors and Motel, as well as mini-series like the notorious hit You Can’t See Round Corners and the notorious flop The Purple Jacaranda, and TV plays like Johnny Belinda (for Shell Presents), Cross of Gold and What About Next Year.
This is a decent little suspense tale about a man (Dennis Miller) who turns up at a house looking for a missing friend. He encounters a woman (Terry Aldred), her daughter (Veronica Casey) and an old man (Edward Howell). Miller and Aldred are particularly effective; I liked seeing Miller as a cocky smug guy who find himself in over his head. The direction by Englishman Pat Barton isn’t particularly effective – Lane deserved better. A contemporary review is here.
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