Australian TV Plays: A Cheery Soul (27 April 1966) (BBC)

Based on the play by Patric White. Not filmed in Australia.

In the 1963 Vincent Report Max Harris and Dorothy Underhill said that they didn't think White would work for the ABC. But was this true?

A copy of the script is online here.

Synopsis

Meet Miss Docker: the delightfully ghastly anti-hero of this celebrated Australian classic. She is relentlessly upbeat – the quintessential ‘cheery soul’.

Miss Docker is one of Nobel Laureate Patrick’s White’s most memorable creations. She and her neighbours are as hilarious and peculiar as they are uncannily familiar. Together, this pioneering text and marvellous characters take us on a dizzying ride through suburban Australia, exploring the meaning of morality, mortality and the need for belonging.

In the imagined every-suburb of Sarsparilla, Miss Docker is looking for somewhere to belong as her search for purpose and love leads her in a series of increasingly surreal acts. We follow her from the home of her well-meaning neighbours Mr and Mrs Custance, to the nursing home, the church and finally to the isolated grounds of the crematorium, where a cattle dog makes a final bitter judgement.

Crew

Directed by Gilchrist Calder. Adaptation by Jonquil Antony. Produced by Peter Luke
Music by Tom McCall Production Design by Fanny Taylor

Cast
* Hazel Hughes as Miss. Docker
* Stephen MacDonald     as Reverend Wakeman
* Patricia Heneghan     as Mrs. Wakeman
* Aubrey Richards as Mr. Custance
* Barbara Lott as Mrs. Custance
* Jane Eccles     as     Mrs, Little
* Olwen Griffiths as Matron
* Vivienne Bennett as Mrs. Hibble
* Mary Holder as Mrs. Watmuff
* Lucy Griffiths as Miss. Dando
* May Warden as Mrs. Tole
* Jack Bligh as Mr. Bleeker
* Doris Hall as Mrs. Bleeker
* Dorothy Earsdom as Schoolgirl
* Colin White as Young Tom
* Deborah Stanford as Young Millie
* Laurence Archer as Old Tom

Original play

It was the third in White's series of plays. An article on its history is here.

the play was published as part of a collection in 1965. A review is here.

Adaptation

According to the Daily Mirror, Jonquil Antony who made the adaptation persuaded Mr. White to let the BBC produce the play here for television. " He wasn't very keen as four of his plays were produced in Australia without much success."

Reception

The SMH printed a bad review from a London crit. Typical.

Review from The Stage:

Lesser actress could have thrown it all away BY MARJORIE NORRIS

THERE are rare times when a character in a play seems to step right out of the two-dimensional world of the screen and pace the floor of the very room in which you are sitting. Miss Docker did that on April 27 in Patrick White’s A Cheery... Soul which had been adapted for BBC-1 by Jonquil Antony. It was all there in the writing, certainly, but a lesser actress than Hazel Hughes could have thrown it all away. Hazel Hughes never fails to _____ impress me with the subtleties of characterisation she brings to the smallest supporting role, but with the long-- and very tricky lead ing part of Miss Docker she sur passed even herself. To some people the overgrow n schoolgirl antics, the terrible jokes, the persistent do-gooding. the merciless unthinking and un knowing cruelty, all so disarm- ingly laced with pathos, might seem too outrageous to believe. But there’s nowt as queer as folk, and I give you my Alfy Davy that I once knew a woman so exactly like Hazel Hughes’ Miss Docker that I felt the old familiar urge to hide under the bed coming over me at the sight of her. Such people do exist; and by their very exist ence they drive other people to outrageous antics of their own. Only the very toughest of us can withstand the pressure. In Patrick White’s story only Miss Hibble (a controlled and heartbreaking performance by Vivienne Bennett) had the strength of a woman who had disciplined herself to a stiff- necked acceptance of the petty indignities of life in an old people’s home and could in conse quence remain untouched by both the boisterousness and the pathos. It was pleasing to sec a cast list with so many women’s names in it; and to see the group of act resses handling the scenes in the Home was to make one realise all over again what a wealth of talent is being wasted when there are no parts for artists of this calibre. In addition to Vivienne Bennett, they were Lucy Grillillis (so out standingly convincing in The Great Metropolis as twittery, girlish Miss Dando, May Warden a senile baby to bring tears to the eyes, and Mary Holder as Mrs. Watmulf. They were later joined by Jane Kcdes, as brittle as a piece of fine glass as Mrs. Lillie. The flashbacks to Mrs. Lillie’s youth were, for once, entirely satisfactory as dramatic devices. They heightened our awareness of the contrast between the gaiety of youth and the loneliness of old age. As people whose lives were ruined, by Miss Docker’s blunder ing efforts to be loved, Stephen MacDoiudd and Patricia ilenc- ghan as the vicar and his wife were called upon to hint at a number of unresolved personal problems. This complicated an already complicated plot and it was not their fault that some of their scenes together fell flat. The transfer from Australia to England seemed unnecessary and occasionally caused a false and hollow ring.

Daily Telegraph:

Enormous Zest of Militant Martyr
Author: Sylvia Clayton Date: Thursday, Apr. 28, 1966
Publication: The Daily Telegraph (London, England)

ENORMOUS ZEST OF MILITANT MARTYR,Television,By SYLVIA CLAYTON MISS DOCKER, Gee to her friends, belongs among the characters insufferable in real,life but memorable in fiction. This militant martyr, dedicated to making the world a more cheerful place, first appeared in a short story by the distinguished Australian novelist Patrick White which he later turned into a play. In its television adaptation of’ “ A Cheery Soul “ on B B C-l last night Miss Docker, transplanted from New South Wales to a prim parish in South West England, had lost some of her eccentric lustre. The total effect of a bulldozing personality on a peaceful neighbourhood can be shown more easily in fiction than in drama. Hazel Hughes, however, impersonated Miss Docker with enormous zest in a performance sometimes caricatured and sometimes touching. Her tactless, boisterous invasion of the hushed, idyllic home of Mr. and Mrs. Custance was managed with considerable skill. Her antagonism to Mrs. Lillie, an elderly gentlewoman played with great finesse by Jane Eccles. was vividly expressed. The production, directed by Gilchrist Calder, was conscientious, but struggled in vain to express in pictures thoughts and dreams best left to a reader’s imagination.

The Times

Earlier, B.B.C.-1 presented a play by the distinguished Australian novelist, Mr. Patrick White. Entitled A Cheery Soul it reminded one of the sad truth that the most charitable and kindly people can often be intensely irritating. Unfortunately, Mr. White did not seem to have solved the classic problem of how to present an annoying character without alienating the spectator.,Mr. White’s heroine, a bull-dozing hearty with a voracious appetite, wvas brought rampageously to life by Miss Hazel Hughes. Beside her, many of the other characters seemed pale and uninteresting.