Australian TV Plays: In the Zone (19 March 1957)

Based on a Eugene O'Neill play... from 1917. It had been filmed by the BBC in 1946 so had the stamp of approval. And it was O'Neill.

It was shot in Sydney on 19 March 1957 and shown in Melbourne the following month.

Premise

The lives of the crew on a British tramp steamer, Glencairn, in World War One during the year 1915.

The steamer is sailing into a submarine zone. Davis reports he saw one of the men, Smitty, acting suspiciously. The other men begin to worry if Smitty is a German spy. They tie him up and raid his belongings. When they read Smitty's letters they realise he is covering the fact he is fleeing a destructive love affair.

Cast

* Bruce Beeby as Davis

* Richard Meikle as Jack

* Keith Buckley as Scotty

* Owen Weingott as Smitty

* John Bluthal as Driscoll

* Bruce Wishart as Cocky

About the play

Between 1914 and 1917 Eugene O’Neill wrote four one-act plays featuring several of the same characters, all sailors on a tramp steamer. These plays were Bound East for Cardiff, In the Zone, The Long Voyage Home, and The Moon of the Caribbees.

They were not originally conceived as a “cycle” but from the 1920s onwards would be performed together.

A copy of the play is here. It was a popular hit for the time, thought O'Neil was dissatisfied with it. He later wrote to a critic who praised the play, criticising his own work. O'Neill said:

It is too facile in its conventional technique, too full of clever theatrical tricks, and its long run as a successful headliner in vaudeville proves conclusively to my mind that there must be ‘something rotten in Denmark.* At any rate, this play in no way represents the true me or what I desire to express. It is a situation drama lacking in all spiritual import — there is no big feeling for life inspiring it. Given the plot and a moderate ability to characterize, any industrious playwright could have reeled it off ... I consider In the Zone a conventional construction of the theater as it is.”

I've read the original play but not the script. I get where O'Neill was coming from - this is a more craftsman style piece, a mystery with a resolution, than an attempt at capturing the human spirit. I have to confess I would prefer it if Smitty had been a spy, and I wanted a submarine to take shots at the tramp. And it felt like there were one or two too many characters. But it's Eugene O'Neill. The work is rich, the dialogue strong, the conflict effective.

Other adaptations

It was shot for BBC TV in 1946.

The BBC did a radio version for schools in 1960 and 1963.

Production

It was shot in Sydney.

The ABC would return to that playwright several years later for The Emperor Jones.

The NAA has a photo of the production (not online). See here. It may have been workshoped.