Australian TV Plays: Continuity Man (26 Feb 1964)

Based on a TV script by British writer Peter Nichols. Directed by Storry Walton.

Premise

Don is the continuity man on a British TV show. His wife Roz is a dress designer. They are visited by Don's father Walter and a film star, Manning Bennett, who Don has to interview. Walter tries to connect with the old ways.

Don tries to seduce Manning.

Cast

John Gray as Walter, the father
Judith Arthy as Roz Wheatley
Alan Lander as Don Wheatley
Joanne Duff as Manning Bennett, an actor

Original play

The play was first performed on TV by the BBC in 1963.

Nichols later said in an interview " I mean one of the plays that came on television was in fact called ‘Continuity Man’, and it was a stage play, an early study of my father that was rejected by all the theatre producers, and later went on television in a production with Roger Livesey playing my father, marvellous, Richard Pasco, a very good cast, a four-hander, and, did rather well on television, was rather successful."

Production

It was shot in Sydney. "It's my first real character part," Duff told TV Times. Duff had acted in London, the US and Thailand.

I think Phil Mann tried to get Chris Morham, who directed it in England, to direct it in Australia. Mann sent a letter asking if he'd do it, then asking Morahan if he'd have a look at a play of his called The Day After Yesterday, then asking how many rehearsal hours they did in England.

Reception

The Sydney Morning Herald wrote the topic of the play "demands a quicker reconciliation than is entirely credible within the time span of a short television play" and felt that why John Gray "was as exasperatingly chirpy as the part demanded, and perhaps more so" the producer Storry Walton "did not succeed in drawing performances of matching conviction and assurance from his other players".

Val Marshall who wrote for the Sunday edition of the same paper called it "another piece of first class guff... a well-mounted well-dressed hour of rubbish" in which "none of the four person cast... seemed comfortable" but which still featured "one of the handsomest sets yet seen in a locally produced modern drama, a contemporary apartment authentic in detail right down to the Japanese wallpaper and the potted rubber tree."

The Age called it "one of the most viewable comedies to come our way from Sydney."