A Season in Hell (1 April 1964)

 Remarkable play. First depiction of a gay relationship on Oz Tv. An original Australian play.

Premise

ArthurRimbaud lies dying in bed, tended by his sister. He thinks back on his life, starting when he arrived in Paris aged sixteen. He meets Paul Verlaine, who admired Rimbaud's poetry. Although Verlaine is married to the pregnant Mathilde, he and Rimbaud begin an intense relationship.

Verlaine gets drunk one night and attacks Mathilde. This results in him breaking things off with Rimbaud. Rimbaud returns to his home town.

Cast

• Alan Bickford as Arthur Rimbaud
• Alistair Duncan as Paul Verlaine
• Marion Johns as Madam Verlaine, Verlaine's mother
• Anne Haddy as Mathilde Verlaine
• Betty Dyson as Madame Matue de Falureville, Mathilde's mother
• Eve Hardwicke as Rimbaud's mother, Mme Rimbaud
• Richard Davies as Father Martin
• Patricia Hill as Isabelle Rimbaud
• Susanne Haworth as Isabelle (child)
• Michael Thomas as Frederick Rimbaud
• Zennie Angliss as Vitalie Rimbaud
• Robyn Richards as Marie
• Ronald Morse as Official
• Stanislav Polonski as Waiter

  Production

Patricia Hooker says the friendship of the two men always fascinated her (in 1962 she wrote an episode of a radio show, Poets Corner which focused on Rimbaud), but originally felt it would be necessary to study in France to achieve an authentic background. 

However she then worked on Concord of Sweet Sounds with Henri Safran, a director originally from France, who became interested in her idea of a play about Rimbaud. Hooker said, "With his help it was possible to collect the information I needed, much of which had never been translated from the French."

"Surely there's no obligation on Australian playwrights to dwell exclusively on the subject of Australia past and present," said Hooker. "That field, I think, is becoming rather crowded. If a subject interests me, no matter what its derivation, and I am satisfied with its legitimacy, I write about it. My main aim is to do a craftsman-like job."

She researched the project for two-three months and wrote it in two weeks. "The research was very difficult," she said. "There are not a great deal many sources available in Australia but I managed to read about 13 to 14 books on the subject. I must admit that I became fascinated by the discover that there seemed not to be any previous study of the subject as I was attempting."

Alan Bickford was 19 when cast to play the 16 year old Rimbaud.

It was one of 20 TV plays produced by the ABC in 1964 (and one of only three Australian scripts - the others were The Angry General and The Winds of Green Monday).

The set was designed by Doug Smith.

Script review

 A story of the relationship between poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine - literary figures whose work I'm not that familiar with, but who are famous because of their lifestyles: torrid gay sex in garrets, absinthe and drugs, writing poetry. You can imagine in berets and cigarettes and long pretentious conversations. University arts students have been inspired by these two and their ilk ever since the nineteenth century.

This is an astonishingly good play, bold and ambitious, well researched and compelling. It clearly shows the two men to be in a romantic relationship - clear in a subtle way, like say Farley Granger and John Dall in the movie Rope (1948) - but clear nonetheless. It's remarkable in its power and the sheer fact of its existence on Australian television.

A masterpiece of its day. A work that should be better known.

Reception

The television critic for the Sydney Morning Herald thought the play "was thoughtfully and capably built on known episodes" from the two poets' lives but "suffered by its very episodic character, as well as from the impossibility of supplying several essentials to true story' s full realisation." He added "if the play was a gallant but incomplete effort, its production by Henri Safran was beautifully assured and sensitive, its camera work expert, while an excellent cast was headed by the impressive performances of Alastair Duncan as Verlaine and Alan Bickford as Rimbaud."

The Sunday Sydney Morning Herald called it "a first class production... one of the finest efforts to come from the studios at Gore Hill. It was top notch in all departments."

The Bulletin said "Hooker’s script was essentially a duologue with vignettes, and, although too episodic and uneven in its construction and development, incorporated the visions and images of the poet into the context of the relationship with considerable success only occasionally did Rimbaud step out of the play and declaim. Henri Safran’s production had style and atmosphere. He suggested the deliberately underwritten homosexual tensions by inference rather than by presentation, and he evoked the claustrophobic relationship by isolating the two poets in tight two-shots."

The Canberra Times said the play "in writing, acting, direction, design and technical production would rank well above par for the course in any country in the world. The fact that Australia can produce work of this kind is the strongest argument for the encouragement of our native talent. That it is not produced more often indicates how badly that encouragement, especially financial encouragement is needed." 

The reviewer added that:

Alistair Duncan's portrayal was brilliant. The opening, highly dramatic scenes of the play which Duncan shared with the beautiful Anne Haddy, created such excitement that the viewer readily forgave some later exaggerations... Miss Hooker's play is terribly weak on dialogue, but has enough dramatic design to have allowed director Henri Safran's imaginative cutting, clever atmospheric use of lighting and off beat camera-work to make this one of the best productions seen from one of our best producers.

The Sunday Telegraph said it was a "sensitive production... but the subject was formidably testing for living room audiences... its gloomy, unsavory theme probably chased most uncommitted viewers away after the first fifteen minutes."

 Other productions

The play was performed on ABC radio in 1964. 

The radio play was the ABC's official entry into the 1964 Italia Prize Competition.

Hooker was meant to follow it with another play for the ABC, Winger Chariot about Socrates. It was not filmed for TV but was adapted for radio.

The play was repeated in Sydney on 24 March 1965 and Melbourne on 29 April 1965. 

The play was later translated into Italian and French. It was turned into a stage play which was on at the Traverse Theatre in Edinbrugh. I also think the play was performed in Adelaide in 1965.

A search of their website suggests the National Archives may hold a copy, with running time listed as 1:16:22. 

Untitled article

 

SMH TV Guide 30 March 1964

The Age TV Guide 23 April 1964

Canberra Times 22 March 1965 p23

SMH TV Guide 15 March 1965 p 4

The Age TV Guide 23 April 1964 p 5

Canberra Times 26 March 1965 p 15

SMH 2 April 1964 p 5

SMH 5 April 1964 p 85

The Bulletin 11 April 1964 p 39

 

TVTimes Qld 15 April 1964 p 17

The Stage 12 Oct 1967 p 8

TV Times

Forgotten Australian TV Plays: A Season in Hell
by Stephen Vagg
June 14, 2021
Stephen Vagg’s series on forgotten Australian TV plays looks at one of the best ever made: the groundbreaking A Season in Hell, the first Australian TV drama to focus on a gay relationship.

You cannot tell a history of the arts in Australia without touching on the contribution of LGBTQI people. The history of forgotten Australian TV plays is full of notable queer contributors including writers (Alan Seymour, Sumner Locke Elliot, Hal Porter), directors (Alan Burke), and actors (Thelma Scott, Gwen Plumb).

It did not follow, though, that the plays touched on many queer themes. In the 1950s and 1960s, such matter was generally taboo on our screens, reflecting the social conservatism and laws of the time. But the non-hetero world was not completely absent from our screens.

In the 1950s, there were two Australian TV versions of Patrick Hamilton’s classic play Rope, about a pair of gay thrill killers based on Leopold and Loeb. In 1960, there was a TV version of the hit play Seagulls Over Sorrento, including a subplot where a (male) sailor complains that another (male) sailor wants to seduce him. And in 1964, there was A Season in Hell, an 80-minute depiction of a romantic relationship between two men. That’s right, eight years before Number 96 took Australian TV’s virginity, two men were getting it on with each other in prime time on the ABC.

A Season in Hell was based on a script by Pat Hooker (1925-2001), a one-time stenographer and amateur playwright, who in the early 1960s established herself as one of the leading writers for Australian television. She later emigrated to England where she had a successful career penning radio and TV plays.

A Season in Hell tells the (real-life) story of the romance between the French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine in the 1870s. They had the sort of tempestuous, drama-filled love affair that has impressed first year Arts students for over a century, with its wild sex, self-centered behaviour, infidelity, absinthe guzzling, opium-taking, domestic violence, pretentious chat, defying authority, writing classic poetry, breaking up and making up and breaking up for good, then dying young (well, young-ish) in exotic locations.

The relationship has been dramatised a number of times over the years: Christopher Hampton wrote a 1967 stage play, Total Eclipse, which was filmed in the 1990s (with Leo di Caprio as Rimbaud); there was also a 1971 Italian film called A Season in Hell which (I think) has nothing to do with Hooker’s play (one of Rimbaud’s most famous poems was called A Season in Hell, and that title gets used a lot on Rimbaud-inspired works).

Pat Hooker’s take on the story begins with a dying Arthur Rimbaud (played by Allan Bickford) lying in bed. He reminisces about being a young man (as in, sixteen years old young) arriving in Paris, meeting Paul Verlaine (Alistair Duncan) who has admired Rimbaud’s poetry. It’s lust at first sight for Paul and Arthur, and the two start a torrid affair, much to the consternation of Verlaine’s pregnant wife (Anne Haddy from Neighbours). The two men don’t exactly have the most emotionally healthy relationship – Verlaine winds up shooting Rimbaud in a fit of jealousy – but they can’t seem to quit each other.

This is quite racy stuff to get on our screens, especially in 1964 (remember, South Australia didn’t decriminalise homosexuality until 1975). I can only assume the script got past the censor because it was (a) based on real people of historical importance, (b) set in the previous century, making the subject matter less scary, (c) concerned French poets, who no one expects to behave well, so it’s not shocking when they don’t, (d) a story that ends in tragedy and misery, so while the leads may be gay they’re never happy, and (e) treated with tact and taste, for all the absinthe drinking (an unworldly person could watch it and think Rimbaud and Verlaine were just good friends). One key moment is conveyed via description rather than dramatising, and while normally I’m a fan of “showing not telling”, that moment involves Verlaine hitting his child and trying to strangle his wife, so I’m sympathetic to Pat Hooker electing to handle it more discreetly.

It’s a superb script from Hooker, incidentally, a dramatic and intelligent exploration of the relationship between two complex, compelling characters (not likeable – they’re clearly self-centred narcissists, we did not get nice LGBTQI on Oz TV until Don Finlayson on Number 96 – but compelling). She collaborated brilliantly with director Henri Safran, who Hooker said was crucial to her research on this script; the two had previously worked together on the 1963 TV play Concorde of Sweet Sounds (which, like this, examines the notion of what it is to be an artist). They might have turned into one of the great writer-director teams in Australian television had not both emigrated in the mid-60s. (Safran would return to Australia to live but not Hooker)

The running time is 80 minutes, meaning scenes have time to breathe; it is a character piece rather than a plotty one, and some may find the pace too slow. The acting is very fine (I had not seen Alistair Duncan in anything before but I swear his voice was familiar) and the sets and costumes are superb.

Pat Hooker’s English credits included the landmark TV play The Golden Road (1973), the first lesbian-themed play broadcast on British television to have been written by a woman. Considering this and A Season in Hell and the fact Hooker never married, I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest Hooker was a lesbian in real life, though I can’t say for sure. British historian Billy Smart has written some first-rate pieces on Hooker, including one on The Golden Road here, and a biographical overview of the writer here. They are wonderful tributes to her talent, but Hooker is still far too little known for someone who was clearly a major writer.

A Season in Hell should also be better known; it was adapted for radio and the stage as well as this TV version (which was repeated), so it was hardly ignored, but it was never regarded as the classic that it was and is. It ranks among the finest TV plays ever made in Australia.

TV Times Vic

NLA Throssell

NLA Throssell