Australian TV Plays: Anthony and Cleopatra (17 June 1959)

It was broadcast live in Melbourne then recorded and screened in Sydney. The ABC also broadcast a production of Hamlet at the same time, which was broadcast live in Sydney then recorded and screened in Melbourne.

They were the ABC's first live Shakespeare performances.

Cast

Bettine Kauffman as Cleopatra
Keith Eden as Antony
Kevin Miles as Caesar
Laurier Lange as Lepidus
Edward Howell as Agrippa
Judith Godden as Charmain
Paul Bacon as Alexas
Beverly Dunn as Octavia
Frank Gatliff as Pompey
John Morgan as Menas
Keith Hudson as Eros
Alan Tobin as Procuecius
Colin Eaton as Soothsayer
Philip Stainton as Clown
Hugh McDermott as first messenger
George Ogilvie as second messenger
Alan Hopgood as first soldier
Alan Morley as second soldier
Ken Goodlet as Enobarus
Soula Paulay, R de Winter, Antonio Rodrigues and Albert la Guerre as Cleopatra's attendants
Nevil Thurgood, John Godfrey and Peter Diess as soldiers

Other productions

The play was performed on ABC radio in 1958 with Thelma Scott. This may have inspired the decision to film this particular play.

Production

Arthur Chipper did the script adaptation, which made a number of alterations from the play, including reducing the characters and opening it in Rome not Alexandria.

It was shot at ABC's studios in Rippon Lea.

It used a cast of 24, 15 speaking parts, ten sets and 31 scenes. Another account said it had 15 speaking parts and six extras. It was meant to be the biggest call on the costume department.

There were 31 scene changes.

It was Keith Eden's first performance as a "straight" actor on TV - he was better known as a radio actor.

Christoper Muir told me in an email... With fanfares sounding I directed it live in the studio. Calamity followed calamity - swords breaking, helmets falling off actors' heads, lines bing prompted all the time. A calamity indeed - somehow I survived the ridicule I'm sure that it's well remembered.

Crew

Costumes - Keith Clarke. Set design - Jon Peters. Script assistant - Philippa Haesler - profile on her here. Technical producer - Gavin Thompson. Adapted - Arthur Chipper.

Reception

"Janus", the TV critic for The Age thought the play was "not for television." This review prompted a letter of complaint from a viewer.

Another critic for the same paper said it "was a gallant and praiseworthy attempt in the face of heavy odds" but did not think the play suitable for television although he liked the two lead performances.

The Woman's Weekly said it "couldn't compare with the excellent live Sydney production of "Hamlet" for acting, lighting, or camera work... I didn't like Keith Eden as Antony—he didn't convey his greatness as a soldier or a power in the land, nor look to me like the great woman's man he was."

The Sydney Morning Herald critic wrote that:

Not much of the pomp and poetry came through the rich texture of Shakespeare's language in the... production.. although as a straightforward account of love and war this Melbourne performance Was satisfactory enough. Two things helped to lower the temperature of the love and the language; first, Arthur Chipper's rearrangement of the first half of the play was quite skillful, but the cutting was on a political rather than on a passionate bias, and second, producer Christopher Muir's use of cameras and- lighting did little—except in a few scenes — to imaginatively underline the play's mood, atmosphere, and growing tensions.

The Bulletin said "A satisfactory TV treatment of this play is probably impossible. Even more than Hamlet it cries out for space and color. Its conflicting worlds of politics and self-consuming passion are created in images of the utmost scope and vigor, and if a producer cannot match them in physical terms he must concentrate on the richness of the poetry and look continually for the points of tension between the two worlds."

Australian TV critics of the late 1950s were snobs.

Frank Thring of TV Week called the production "monstrous".

Listener In said "the grave experiment failed".

The ABC on Shakespeare

During the Vincent Committee, various ABC execs talked about Shakespeare.

Moses:

Evidence has been given that the percentage of audiences that looks at A.B.C. programmes is about 15 per cent, compared with 85 per cent, which looks at commercial stations. Would that be about your assessment?
— I have not seen the recent figures on our own plays, but I do know we have had quite substantial audiences for well-known plays. However I would be quite happy if we put on a Shakespearean play to have 15 per cent, of the total audience. Thai is more than would go to see any Shakespearean play in Australia over a very long period...

...In the field of drama every western, every thriller and every feature film goes to build up the total. The amount of live drama we put on would appear to be small in proportion to the total but I think it is significant to remember that when you hire a film from overseas it occupies only an hour and a half or an hour, but when we produce an Australian film we give employment to a cast for over three weeks just to put on one production.
By Senator Wright.—How much of the £2,900,000 expended by the Commission was spent on Australian drama?
—It is very hard to say. Apart from the hiring of the cast concerned you have also got your production facilities—the people who make the studios and the people who paint the sets.—They are Australians who are getting employment in order to put on these regular plays. As I said, in order to put on a single play of an hour or an hour and a half we employ actors for three weeks.
What would your production osts be?
—Excluding all the technical costs and the overhead cost and that sort of thing a normal play would cost between £1,500 and £2,000. When you put on a Shakespearean play with a big cast the costs go up to somewhere close to £4,000. That, of course, does not take into consideration any part of the cost of your overhead and the technicians who are employed.

Neil Hutchison

Of course it must be borne in mind that the great works of classical literature should never be excluded from our programmes. There should always be certain amount of Shakespeare, for instance, and the great recognised playwrights of antiquity, in the English language particularly, as our own schools study Shakespeare, it is essential that Shakespeare should be seen on television because in remote areas the likelihood of seeing fuliscaie stage productions is remote.