Australian TV Plays: GMH - The Mystery of the Hansom Cab (6 Aug 1961)

An adaptation of a theatre adaptation of the novel.

Premise

In 1890s Melbourne, a young man murders a blackmailer in a hansom cab. The murderer kills three more people then romances an heiress.

Cast

Barry Pree as the innocent man wrongly accused of the crime
Fred Parslow as the villain Felix Rolleston
Leon Lissek as Mr Gorby
Elaine Cusik as Rubina
Joan Harris as Mother Guttersnipe
Mary Hardy as Salvation Army Girl, Sal Rawlins
Robert Hornery as her boyfriend Clem Rankin
Patsy King as Madge Frettelby
Bryan Edward
Marion Edward as Rosanna Moore
Ron Finney
Graeme Hughes
Malcolm Phillips

Original novel

The novel by Fergus Hume was published in 1886. It was an instant best seller. The complete text is here.

Other adaptations

It was filmed in Australia in 1911 and 1925 and would be later in 2012. It was filmed in England in 1915.

The BBC adapted it for radio in 1958.

The ABC did a radio serial version which aired afterwards starting Sept 1961. Richard lane adapted it see here.

This would have seemed a natural for early Australian TV but they did a jokey version. They didn't adapt other classics like For the Term of His Natural Life or Robbery Under Arms.

1961 Play Version

Actor-writer Barry Pree, then 22 years of age, had adapted the novel into a stage play.

It was the first commissioned play for the Union Theatre Repertory Company, later the Melbourne Theatre Company by its first writer in residence. (He did this on the basis of his play A Fox in the Night written when he was 19.)

John Sumner had suggested Pree adapt the novel, which had been hugely popular in its day but had not been revived for a number of years.

Pree took a farcical approach to the material, turning it into a spoof of old time melodramas. The original directors were John Sumner and George Ogilvie.

It debuted at the Union Theatre in Parkville on 9 January 1961 and ran until 4 February. The cast were headed by Lewis Fiander (hero), Frederick Parslow (Villain) and Patsy King. The Age called it a triumph for all concerned... rollicking good fun and entertainment."Another review in the same paper called it "unqualifiedly good entertainment." The Bulletin said "most audiences will enjoy Pree's joke."

The play then had a run at Russell Street Theatre from March until May. The stage play was very popular with audiences.The cast included Fred Parslow, Joan Harris and Mary Hardy, who had been in many Melbourne musicals, including Free as Air, Salad Days and Auntie Mamie.

TV Version

In May 1961 it was announced General Motors would sponsor this and The Concert.

The TV adaptation was basically a filmed version of the stage performance. It was filmed at the Russell St Theatre Melbourne and included the reactions of the audience applauding the hero and booing and throwing peanuts at the villain, with occasional cutaways to a pianist playing "mood music".Two songs of the era, "Daisy" and "Lily of the Laguna" were played.

It took 24 hours to move the recording equipment from the studio to the theatre. It used four cameras and special equipment and lighting

The Sydney Morning Herald said Barry Pree played "a personably virtuous hero with a variable Irish accent, cheerfully mixed top-hatted histrionics with music-hall singing and dancing, a barrow-load of deliberate anachronisms, and some mockery of modern Melbourne in the style of intimate revue."

Songs -"Come to the Garden Maud", "Daisy", "Lily of the Laguna"

Reception

The TV critic for the Sydney Morning Herald called it "an interesting experiment... only partially successful in terms of the special techniques of television. There were too many long-distance shots, of doll-like .figures on stage; not enough of the searching intimacy of expression on which television thrives."

The Australian Woman's Weekly said "As is fashionable with such melodramas nowadays, the audience was invited to throw peanuts at the villain. It could have done without the topicality and the peanuts. The audience, carried away, apparently, by being on TV, showered the cast indiscriminately with peanuts to the point of being irritating."

The novel was adapted for Australian radio later in 1961.