Australian TV Plays: Harp in the South (10 July 1964)

Adaptation of Ruth Park's classic novel. Done in England not Australia.

Cast

Ed Devereaux as Hughie Darcy
Brenda Dunrich as Mumma Darcy
Bettina Dickson as Delie Stock
Veronica Lang as Roie Darcy
Andy Ho as Lick Jimmy
Muguette De Braie as Rosa Siciliano
George Roderick as Luigi Siciliano
Colette Martin as Dolour Darcy
Moya O'Sullivan as Miss Sheily
Bill Levis as Johnny Sheily
Kevin Brennan as Patrick Diamond
Lew Luton as Tommy Mendel

Original novel

The novel was first published in the Sydney Morning Herald in 1947. It was published in 1948. The sequel Poor Man's Orange came out in 1949. It's never been out of print.

Other adaptations

There was a play adaptation by Park and Leslie Rees that premiered in 1949.

A 1972 article refers to Channel Seven wanting to make a mini series based on it. See here.

It was a mini series in 1986 and 1987. it was adapted for stage again in 2018.

Production

Alan Burke was at the ABC for 28 years (1958 to 1986). However he took a year off on leave without pay in 1964 and went to England (he'd trained at the BBC in 1954). While there he did a production of Harp of the South for BBC 2. "It could not have been a happier event" he said. More than 60% of the cast were Australians living in London. During this time he met Eric Tayler who later worked for the BBC.

Burke had written a musical version of the play which had not been professionally performed.

Bruce Stewart adapted it. Eric Tayler produced.

It went for 75 mins.

Burke talked about it to Graham Shirley in 2004:

I went to the BBC where I had trained previously and just sort of scouted around asking if there was anything I could do and I was introduced to a couple of Executive Producers... the second of them was Eric Tayler, a New Zealander who had like myself, gone into CRTS Training at the end of the War. And he’d in fact gone in to Drama School where I’d gone to University and anyway he’d worked his way to the BBC as an Executive Producer and was most amenable and lovely to talk to... He said ‘well, I’ve got this Australian thing, I don’t know whether you’d be interested in it’ and it turned out to be an adaptation of The Harp in the South. And I said ‘well, not only would I be interested but you’d be happy to know that for the last two years I’ve been working on a musical adaptation of it with Peter Benjamin and Peter Stanndard... he gave me the script... But what they had done was taken the book in some detail and stopped at whatever point they’d reached the air time that the proposed production. In other words it left the shape of the book about half way, in fact it ended on a note of great depression which the book does not do. So I said ‘well, I’d like to fiddle with it’ so I took it away and fiddled with it and I don’t think the adaptor was very pleased but Eric approved in which I took us from that and in a couple of very swift sentences, we hit the optimistic ending that the book has and that worked...

So I directed it and used a tremendous number of Australian actors as you can imagine including Ed Devereaux who played Huey brilliantly and Brenda Dunrich whose name I had known from Australian radio but had never met played Mumma. Both gave lovely performances. Ed was that gratifying sort of actor who in an early rehearsal would play his last sad scene and cry which I found very winning. You know, he’d mop his eyes and then later when you’d been rehearsing for a couple of weeks, he’d do it again and he’d look up and laugh as he mopped his eyes saying ‘oh that always gets me’ or something like that...It was a series of adapted novels, something Story. Anyway Eric had done this but they were all adaptations from novels and this particular one happened to be sort of in the bin for some time.

It was interesting, cast a lot of Australians, I think we had a cast of about forty including extras and if I remember correctly it was some extraordinary number like 15 or 16 were Australian which was nice. Big studio, six cameras, the first time I think I’d worked with six cameras. Lovely design by a lady called Sally Hulke who’d done a lot of research into ‘the look’ and got it very nicely. Ed Deveraux and Brenda Dunrich (sp?) as Hughie and Mumma were wonderful. Betty Dixon played Delie Stock (sp?). Kevin Brennan played Mr Diamond. It was like that, all the local Australian borns who were fairly established in London so it was lovely to be able to use them, you didn’t have to make any compromise, they were fine actors but the fact that they had Australian accents in the back pocket ready for when you needed them, was wonderful. Moya O’Sullivan oh a couple of other people, can’t remember the rest but they were all there...

Tthe demands of the novel, of course a bit picturesque, I mean it’s about the district, it’s not just about one house and consequently the adaptation... called for a lot of interiors obviously of the family but street stuff and public places and things like. I wasn’t quite sure how to cope with it for a studio, didn’t want to go out and film more than we had to. We filmed a bonfire which is central and we couldn’t do that in the studio. However the set, very nicely Sally caught, I had asked for some buttresses on the outside the back of the set as it were, as if the houses were falling down and had the support. And under these buttresses it was very handy to use as a twosome for Rowie and Tommy, one of the romantic scenes and I tried my old singing cameras lurk which is you know starting with the crane and musically working into a close up from a wide shot, the swoops and lifts and what have you. They had a little difficulty understanding me about that. I had done it with several operas and it was sort of ingrained in my manner and my style but it turned out to be sort of oh, you go forward there and then you turn left then you drop, and it wasn’t singing at all you know, it wasn’t that legato sort of thing I wanted. However that aside, it was very satisfactory to do .

The format was 75 minutes and he’d adapted the book until he had 75 minutes of air time and then stopped if you see what I mean. Didn’t take the shape of the book and reproduce it and the shape of the book of course, takes a big dip in the middle, unpleasantness and sadness and tragedy and then it rises again to the optimism at the end of the book, which I think it vitally important. Because it cut out at 75 minutes we were left in the depths of the depression. Like the second act curtain of a three act play. I said to Eric ‘oh that won’t do, forgive me, I’m going to fiddle with it’ and by adding one little scene and sort of encapsulating virtually what happened after the depression moment and a little optimistic speech from Hughie and Momma at their front gate and we ended on that. It worked very well and I must say dear Ed Devereaux cried at every rehearsal which is a great compliment... He is a dear man and he’s very soft man for all his business acumen and oh yes, he was immensely touching, very good. I had at that stage not heard of Ed, I didn’t know him at all and Eric recommended that I see him, he’d worked for Eric a lot. And I just fell in love the minute I met him, he was wonderful. So that was very happy and of course I saw a lot Ed afterwards when he came back, not a lot but a fair bit and I was very pleased to have made a good friend of him. So that’s really Harp in the South.

Reception

It showed on Story Parade on BBC2.

The Stage said it "just didn't come off".