Australian TV Plays: A Time to Speak (7 April 1965)

Australian play, an original, from Noel Robinson.

Premise

In the year 1900, a religious community, the Community, is led by the Elder. One of the Community's inhabitants, Esther, visits a local doctor, Gilly, asking if he can look after a young girl, who is mentally impaired. Gill recommends that the girl follow a course of action. The girl returns to the Community.

Several days later the girl dies. The doctor diagnoses pneumonia and wonders what impact the Elder has. Gilly's wife Anne wants her husband to move away like their friend Chad.

Cast

Raymond Westwell as the Elder
Wyn Roberts as the doctor, Gilly
Keith Eden as Chad Jensen
Joan MacArthur as the leader's wife, Sister Esther
Patsy King as Annie, the doctor's wife
George Whaley as John
Michael Howley as Matthew
Martin Magee as Benjamin
Edward Howell as Man

Production

It was filmed in Melbourne with location footage at Montsalvat near Eltham.

Director Patrick Barton said he chose Montsalvat because it had a huge meeting hall, a courtyard and the inside of a cottage. ABV-2's outside broadcast unit, normally used for sport and actuality programs was used for the location scenes.

Cast members Raymond Westwell and Joan MacArthur were married in real life.

Thoughts on script

Wow! What a great surprise. Little known, but a gripping atmospheric tale of a doctor who has to deal with a cult-y religious community in rural Australia in 1900. Powerful, an excellent study of how people can twist religion.

Touches on Aboriginal matters - a key subplot involves a developmentally delayed girl, who is said to be Aboriginal, but is actually white. This involves the mystery of the "lost white girl" raised in the bush by Aboriginals, which was a trope of Australian literature/cultural history for a time.

Other adapatations

It was adapted for BBC radio in 1967.

Reception

The Australian Woman's Weekly TV critic called it "a meaty play", and said she "particularly liked the understated ending".

The Canberra Times said it was "a good play, well suited to television, and simply loaded with righteousness enough for all those people who found the honest, healthy lust of The Swagmanwas not their . . , cup of tea."

The TV critic for The Sydney Morning Herald said the play was "an uncommonly arresting drama about the conflict of personalities" in which the director "used the austere and sombre setting of a farm community lo good effect. Some of the scenes were rather abrupt, as was the ending, but generally tension was maintained well."