Australian TV Plays: Fury in Petticoats (3 June 1962)

Tale of Charles Darwin.

Premise

The Reverend William Dill, his wife Augusta and daughter Anne are preparing to meet the curate Edward Parslowe and his friend Charles Darwin for dinner. Edward loves Anne but Augusta wants her daughted to meet Charles Darwin.

Darwin talks about a native girl, Fuegia, they have brought back. Anne and Dill decide to attempt to convert her to Christianity. goes to live in an English country vicarage. Fuegia disrupts life in the town. Even Charles Darwin realises the experiment is doomed.

Cast

Lola Brooks as Anne Dill
Michael Duffield as Rev. William Dill
Norman Kaye as Charles Darwin
Mark Kelly as Edward Parsloe
Fay Kelton as Fuegia Basket
Elizabeth Wing as Mrs. Dill
Joan Barris as Baxter, the maid

Original TV Play

It was originally a 1961 TV play by Elaine Morgan (1920-2013). It was filmed for the BBC.

Although fictional, the plot is based on a historical incident in 1836, when naturalist Charles Darwin brought to England four natives from the island of Tierra del Fuego, near South America. Some changes were made from historical fact - the Fugeia was older.

The Guardian said it carried "no conviction".

Other adaptations

There was a British radio adaptation in 1964 (by the BBC) but I've been unable to see if there was an Aussie one.

Production

It was shot in Melbourne. Chris Muir directed. It was Lola Brooks' first live Melbourne appearance though she had appeared in several Sydney productions.

Charles Darwin visited Australia. A shame they couldn't have made a story about that.

Broadcast

It aired in Sydney on 24 October competing against the Australian TV play The Runner with Lew Luton.

Reception

The Age called it "good television... an unpretentious play, well mounted and with straight forward production."

The Sydney Morning Herald wrote that:

[It] was an oddly contrived story produced in that stilted solemn atmosphere to which "period" plays often conform. The fact that Charles Darwin once brought a few sad and sorry natives from Terra del Fuego to England could possibly be the basis for a seriously realistic glimpse of early colour problems, or else, perhaps, be artificially brightened into a spirited comedy... Morgan attempted to provide humour and also facile generalisations in a play which neither illuminates nor 'sparkles. The native girl... unconvincingly combined the antics of a savage monkey with an unlikely capacity for sophisticated, fluent reasoning, and the reactions of the prim nineteenth century vicarage were equally unconvincing and lacking in continuity. The actors did not do much to enliven their pasteboard parts, with the exception of Lola Brooks, who managed to bring a sensitive and natural manner to her part.

Good old Frank Roberts f the Bulletin said it was "a big improvement" on Muir's earlier Boy Around the Corner.

Frank Thring in TV Week liked it.

At the end of the year The Age said it was a drama "worth recalling".