An Australian story and Australian play!
The ABC got over the shock of Multi Coloured Umbrella and resorted to something with a rich pedigree.
I would love to see this. I've read the play and it is entertaining, though long. Good drama. Will Sterling directed.
Premise
Ned Kelly and his gang hold up the hotel at Jerilderie.
They retreat to a
hideout where they are visited by "The Roo".
They realise they have
been betrayed by Aaron Sherritt and arrange for him to be shot.
They
then take over the hotel at Glenrowan. Ned is shot and captured.
Cast
The Kelly Gang:
- Ken Goodlet as Ned Kelly
- Syd Conabere as Joe Byrne
- Alan Hopgood as Dan Kelly
- John Godfrey as Steve Hart
- Betty Phillips as "The Roo", Ned Kelly's girlfriend
At Jerilderie
- Collins Hilston as Living
- Alan Tobin as Mackin
- Campbell Copelin as Elliott
- Laurier Lange as Tarleton
- Dawn Lightfoot as barmaid
- Edward Brayshaw as squatter
At the Sherritt's
- Bettine Kauffman as Mrs Sherritt
- Moria Carleton as Mrs Barry
- Nevil Thurgood as Sergeant
- Roland Redshaw as Aaron Sherrit
At Glenrowan
- Betty Eames as Mrs Jones
- Eileen Colocott as barmaid
- Tony Riddell as Curnow
- Mort Hall as Reardon
- Marcel Gugola as Bracken
- Bruce Archer as Jack Jones
- Betty Eames as Mrs Jones
With Dennis Miller, Ron Grainger, Robin Ramsay, Peter Parkes, Julian Blackburn, Alec Baker
Original radio play
The play was first produced as a radio play on the ABC, 21 June 1942.
The writer, Douglas Stewart, just had a great success with a radio verse play Fire on the Snow.. When asked why he decided to tackle Ned Kelly he later said:
The Greek and Elizabethan playwrights had wicked Kings and Queens to analyse. Here in Australia, with royalty remote and constitutional, we have to look about for a different kind of symbolic figure: and that is where Ned Kelly comes in. He is symbolic, a national legend, because in his best aspects he typifies some of the virtues of our early colonial period-courage, dashing horsemanship, resistance to tyranny, a passion for freedom-and he is humanly interesting for his failings.
I first thought of writing about him after 1 had written a play for radio, The Fire on the Snow, about Scott at the South Pole. I was interested in the heroic impulse in man-without which we perish-and became fascinated with Ned Kelly as another example of that heroic impulse, marred and misdirected, yet still powerful. And;-of course, at the same time the theme gave me a chance to set down a lot of thoughts I had been wanting to express about Australia, both the country and the national character: for Ned moved very close to his native earth-in many ways like an embodiment of it.
He added
In its broad outline, and in many details, the play is historically accurate. But it does not pretend to be accurate in every detail; and, in fact, some deliberate elimination and compression of history, as well as some invention, was necessary to fit the story into dramatic form. Charles White’s The Kelly Gang was the chief source of information. The two Kellys, Hart and Byrne are portrayed as I imagine they were in real life. All the other characters, though they bear the names of people who once lived, should be regarded as fictional. D.A.S.
Stage play
It became a stage play presented by the Sydney University Dramatic Society, 14 October 1942. It was published by Angus and Robertson in 1943.
It was performed in Melbourne in 1944 at the Union Theatre.
The stage version was professionally produced by the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust in 1956 with Leo McKern as Ned Kelly. It was the second Australian play put on by the Trust - the first had been Summer of the Seventeenth Doll. A copy of the program from this production is here. A review at the SMH is here.
It was the first time McKern played an Australian on stage! He played Ned. He said at the time about Kelly:
"His enemies regarded him as a brute, a murderer, a wicked pig, and a real criminal. I don't see him that way. I believe those remarks came from propertied classes of the time whom he opposed. But I do not see him according to the nonsensical modern legend which hails him as a great hero, a nineteenth-century Robin Hood. The truth, I feel, lies somewhere between. Kelly was no uneducated bushman. You have only to see his handwriting or read some of the amazing speeches he made during his trial."
Alan Burke worked on this production for the trust (the second of eight he did for them). In a 2006 interview he called the production "a disaster, sadly." (He said it
'died on the vine'.)
In another interview he called it
"not a very good" production although he said he felt very strongly about the play "and really wanted to do it"; he also said Manning Clark wrote a note to him saying how much he liked the concept.
Burke told Graham Shirley in 2004 the production "died the death. It was to be for the Olympics at the Maj in Melbourne but when that died the death, we did The Rainmaker a lovely, compact, small modern lovely play." Burke co directed that with McKern.
A list of some of the productions of the stage play in Australia is
here.
It doesn't get performed much any more.
Also produced in Auckland and
Wellington, NZ, in 1953 and on BBC radio in 1955
My thoughts on the play
Stewart
was a poet, editor and literary critic as well as a drama writer. Also
like a lot of famous Australians he was a New Zealander before moving
across the pond and dominating Australian literature. His two most
famous dramatic works were verse plays originally performed on radio -
The Fire and the Snow and
Ned Kelly.
Both are terrific. I haven't heard them but read them. Both were also
adapted into stage plays. Radio National did a documentary on
Fire on the Snow years ago - http://www.abc.net.au/rn/legacy/programs/playingthe20thcentury/stories/2011/3087120.htm.
Ned
Kelly was first performed on radio in 1942, then was adapted for stage.
The Elizabethan Theatre Trust did a version with Leo McKern - this may
have inspired the ABC to film it as they liked to do Australian plays
which had been performed by the Trust.
It's a very good play.
There's plenty of versions of the Ned Kelly story out there - but this
one is an entertaining take. I enjoyed the boldness of the verse:
sometimes the words seemed flowery other times it was colloquial. The
story starts during the robbery at Jerilderee.
Stewart makes rich
characters of three of the gang: Ned, messiah-like, intense, a young Che
Guevera; Joe, romantic, flamboyant, smart; Hart, angry at Ned. Dan
doesn't get much of a look in but there are some interesting support
cast: "Inkpot" a pompous banker worker; Aaron Sheritt; Curnow; and most
of all "The Roo" a girl who helps the gang.
Plenty of great scenes, like the Glenrowan siege, the death of Jackson, Aaron Sherritt waiting to be killed, the Roo.
It's
a long play. Really long. Did they present it on stage this long? I'm
not sure it needed to be. Maybe that's why it isn't often revived. But
it's very good.
Other adaptations
1959 Radio Production
The ABC produced the play on radio in March 1959. Syd Conbere and Wynn Roberts were in the cast.
Stewart said one of the play's themes was "the conflict between the
over-civilised man and the outlaw and the necessity for a balance
between the two attitudes to life. Part of the spirit that was in the
celebrated bushranger is still in the Australian character - the deep
desire for freedom and impatience with authority."
A biographical sketch of Stewart from 1959 is here.
TV Production
In July 1959 it was announced the production would be filmed at
ABC's Melbourne studios at Ripponlea, with the scene of Kelly's capture
shot on location at Glenrowan.
Production may have been delayed (see below).
In early August Sterling and a crew did an initial reconnaissance of the Glenrowan area.
A unit went out to Glenrowan in late August for three days of filming. A
historic building outside the town, the building originally occupied by
Constable Bracken, was dressed up to look like the Royal Hotel in Jerilderie. There was also filming at the Strathbogie Ranges and Beaconsfield, at Guy's Hill. William Sterling said this footage could not be duplicated anywhere else in Victoria. A battered hut became Mrs Jones hotel at Glenrowan.
Cameraman Les Hendy used an 18 foot hydraulic crane to film at Beaconsfield.
Robert Hughes wrote the music score, which also included bush songs from the Kelly years.
Les Hendy was cameraman, Harold Fletcher did props, Brian Faull (who later became a director) was location manager and Audrey Rogers script assistant.
It was directed by William Sterling who in October was assigned to TV drama full time.
There were 15 minutes of location film.
A male quarter sang traditional Kelly song and the music for the play was taken from Verdon Williams ballet The Outlaws based on the Ned Kelly story.
Hutchison refers to controversy about production including language.
Crew Incidental music composed and conducted by Verdon Williams. Film sequences cameraman - Leslie Hendy. Designer - Kevin Bartlett. Technical supervision - Robert Forster. Adapted for television and produced by William Sterling.
Reception
The TV critic from the Sydney Morning Herald thought the
production "did a disservice to Douglas Stewart's richly poetic and
deeply probing play" in the adaptation "which, with the real meat of the
play removed, dealt with very little except its bare skeleton. Speech after important speech - Ned's bitter reminiscence about his youth and Joe Byrne's meditation on loneliness among them - was either missing or harshly cut. Conceived mainly in terms of the story's violent action with not enough of the necessary examination of men and motives to balance it, the play lost its proper perspective. It followed that neither Kenneth Goodlet... nor Sydney Conabere... could round out the characters as the author saw them in the original stage play. And Goodlet was not helped in the final scene by a costume which in no way suggested the gigantic and grostesque armoured figure demanded quite explicitly by the playwright." He
complained that William Sterling's direction, "after a
promising beginning, failed to bring off a number of all too tricky
camera effects. In fact, there was right through the production no hint that the play could be left along to speak, honestly and eloquently, for itself."
Janus, the critic for The Age felt the program was too different American Western TV shows saying "I now feel that few members of the cast, including the producer, Will Sterling, are familiar with the basic elements of the American Western..." He said the scene where Aaron Sherritt dies has him just fall on the floor which "comes as a great shock to viewers reared on a diet of American westerns - as most of us have been" and felt "the bushrangers spoke like gentlemen... is unforgiveable in a world dominated by Clint Walker, Ward Bond and Robert Culp... Of course the Kelly boys may have spoken and acted this way. Byu once again Channel 2 is bucking the traditions laid down by thousands of hours of TV westerns." Janus felt Aaron Sherriff should not have stood in front of a window peering into darkness, and didn't think that bushrangers would go for their guns on hearing the sound of horses arriving but instead go into the bush. This is the weirdest review! It's not enough like Westerns. Janus added
"There were many
praiseworthy features about this production of Ned Kelly. The outdoor scenes
were excellently filmed and the film was blended with the studio
presentations more effectively than any 'live' drama I have previously
seen. As far as I cpuld see not one wrong button was pressed and there were a lot of buttons pressed in the 70 minutes. A startling effect was gained by Mr Sterling when, in the capture scene of Ned Kelly in the closing moments of the drama, he had the picture of the injured Ned revolving on the TV screens. It was the most effective and, to my knowledge, never used before on our TV screens. The female characters, particularly The Roo (Beverly Phillips) and Rita Sherritt (Bettina Kaufmann( were very impressive. Neither had a large part yet each was convincing, particularly when indulging in the vernacular of the era. The men, if we except Joe Byrne... never quite got into the popular conception of the spirit of the time... The spectacular film opening to the show was another pleasing feaure of Ned Kelly.. It have a suggestion of immediate action. Altogether Ned Kelly was an
interesting and rewarding experiment and I for one would enjoy watching
it again. However verse plays always will have an uphill battle for viewers in competition with the broad, almost juvenile appeal of the American adventure drama. But then so would William Shakespeare."
This review prompted a reply from William Sterling who called it "an attempt to present... as accurately and
historically authentic as possible, a fascinating adventure story from
our past. Why should viewers and critics expect a local production like
Ned Kelly to ape the manners and methods of the American 'westerns'? Indeed these very manners may be a travesty of American history. And why, anyway, should we Australians feed on Hollywood's histrionic anachronisms? Let's go our own way in television and receive constructive criticism
or praise for what we attempt to do for our own history and let us not
perpetuate the purely imaginary and stereotyped methods of the average
Hollywood television film."
Lesley Dare of the TV Times called it "an honorable failure. Its faults lay partly with Douglas Stewart's play, partly with the uneven acting, partly with William Sterling's production. The earlier scenes were excellent, well acted and with beautiful and imaginative production. But as the play progressed, much of the tension was lost. The end was far too slow. Mr Sterling moved his cameras around too much, he was far too fancy. I liked Kenneth Goodlet's interpretation of Ned Kelly very much. The physical resemblance was striking and he had the strength and the personality to handle the part. Sydney Conabere's Steve Hart was less satisfying, partly because of the writing. He could have raved a good deal less. All the same, it was an interesting and at times a very moving drama. I wouldn't have missed it for the world."
The Listener In thought "Stewart's play is not good theatre... it has no clear dramatic spotlight... In adapting the sprawling shape to television, producer William Sterling tried to focus Kelly by trimming the size of Joe Byrne and to create realism by lavish use of outdoor settings. Unfortunately it didn't come off. Kelly remained cloudy and the outdoor sequences tended to slow up action that was already too doffisuve. Perspective was lost in painstaking attention to detail. The cast seemed weighted by inhibitions... And yet Ned Kelly was only disappointing artistically. As a technical produciton it was marked by bold and successful experimentation like the matching of outdoor and studio sequences and the dizzying camera shots which recorded Kelly's death. If we expect to make every post a winner in Australian television drama we will soon be discouraged. It is part failures like Ned Kelly which lay down the practical instruction courses leading towards eventual graduation."
Neil Hutchison refers to bad language in a letter to Will Sterling below.
 |
TV Times 2 Oct 1958
|
 |
| TV Times 2 Oct 1958 |
 |
| TV Times 2 Oct 1958 |
 |
| TV Times 2 Oct 1958 |
 |
TV Times Vic 30 Oct 1959
|
Forgotten Australian Television Plays: A Tale of Two Kellys
by Stephen Vagg
January 15, 2022
Stephen
Vagg’s series on forgotten Australian television plays looks at two
done by the ABC about Ned Kelly: Ned Kelly (1959) and Ballad for One Gun
(1963).
There are few more famous Australian icons that Ned
Kelly, our favourite bushranger/terrorist/freedom
fighter/hero/boxer/thug/rebel/Irish patriot/Irish killer/horse
thief/sash wearer. On one hand, it’s kind of weird because he didn’t do
that much robbing – certainly not in the class of, say, the
Gardiner-Hall gang, or Captain Thunderbolt. But Ned’s life had X factor:
the charismatic mum, the apprenticeship with Harry Power, the Irish
political thing, the charm, the intelligence, the boldness of his
escapades, the helmet, the spectacle of Glenrowan and the drama of his
execution.
The enigma of Ned and events of his life have acted as
catnip to dramatists, inspiring countless books, plays, mini-series,
films, musicals, songs and animatronic exhibits (a good source is here).
Famously,
the world’s first feature film was The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906),
based on a stage play – the latter fact is curiously overlooked by many
who comment on it. Also under-analysed, IMHO, is the fact that so many
movies about Ned Kelly flop… indeed, the only one that seems to have
been an unqualified success was the 1906 film. I think this is because
Ned’s life resists easy dramatisation – you could argue he was a hero,
but then he tried to derail a packed train… you could argue he was a
villain, but then he did so many heroic things. For what it’s worth, I
think he’s probably better suited to being a support character in
someone else’s drama.
Still, as mentioned, Kelly is dramatic
catnip, so much so that even in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the peak
of Australophobia on Australian TV, the ABC decided to adapt his life
for television not once, but twice: in Ned Kelly (1959), based on
Douglas Stewart’s play and Ballad for One Gun (1963), from an original
script by Philip Grenville Mann. And if this sounds a little populist
from Aunty (“I say old chap, aren’t bushrangers better suited for
episodes of Whiplash?”), I should point out that (a) no other bushranger
got the dramatic treatment at the national broadcaster during this
time, just Ned, and (b) both productions were on the arty,
non-conventional side: Ned Kelly was from a verse play and Ballad for
One Gun was given expressionistic treatment.
I haven’t seen
either production in full, but I’ve seen some clips and read the
original play of Ned Kelly, and read the script for Ballad for One Gun,
and have decided that’s enough for me to talk about them. Because I
think it’s fantastic that both were made and they deserve to be
remembered.
Ned Kelly (1959)
This had its origins in a
1942 stage play by Douglas Stewart (1913-85), a New Zealand poet, short
story writer, essayist, literary editor, critic, journalist and a whole
bunch of other stuff. Stewart spent most of his career in Australia,
making a major contribution to local literature as a writer and editor,
though he’s probably better remembered in literary circles (i.e.
academics) than by the general public.
Stewart had written an
acclaimed verse play about the Scott Antarctic Expedition, Fire on the
Snow, which was hugely acclaimed. (Indeed, I’m surprised that the ABC
didn’t film that at one stage – maybe they were worried about recreating
the Antarctic on the Gore Hill backlot). He was looking around for a
follow up and decided on the subject of Ned Kelly. In Stewart’s own
words…
“The Greek and Elizabethan playwrights had wicked Kings
and Queens to analyse. Here in Australia, with royalty remote and
constitutional, we have to look about for a different kind of symbolic
figure: and that is where Ned Kelly comes in. He is symbolic, a national
legend, because in his best aspects he typifies some of the virtues of
our early colonial period – courage, dashing horsemanship, resistance to
tyranny, a passion for freedom – and he is humanly interesting for his
failings… I was interested in the heroic impulse in man – without which
we perish – and became fascinated with Ned Kelly as another example of
that heroic impulse, marred and misdirected, yet still powerful. And of
course, at the same time the theme gave me a chance to set down a lot of
thoughts I had been wanting to express about Australia, both the
country and the national character: for Ned moved very close to his
native earth – in many ways like an embodiment of it.”
Like Fire
on the Snow, Ned Kelly was a verse drama – as in, the lines were meant
to be non-naturalistic poetry (eg. Shakespeare). It was written as a
stage play but made its debut on ABC radio in 1942 before its premiere
on stage. Response to the radio play was excellent: along with Snow,
it’s generally regarded as the pinnacle of Stewart’s dramas (he did some
others though, including The Golden Lover, Shipwreck and Fisher’s
Ghost). ABC radio produced several versions of Ned Kelly over the years,
and it was performed on air in Canada and Ireland as well as on BBC
radio in 1955.
I’ve read a copy of the stage play version of Ned
Kelly and it’s excellent. The story starts during the robbery at
Jerilderie and goes up until the death of Ned. I enjoyed the boldness of
the verse: sometimes the words seemed flowery, other times it was
colloquial. Stewart makes rich characters of three of the gang: Ned,
messiah-like, intense, a young Che Guevara; Joe, romantic, flamboyant,
smart; Hart, angry at Ned. Dan doesn’t get much of a look in, but there
are some interesting support cast including “Inkpot”, a pompous banker
worker, the doomed Aaron Sherritt, and most of all “The Roo”, a girl who
helps the gang. There are plenty of great scenes, like the Glenrowan
siege and Aaron Sherritt waiting to be killed. It is a long play –
really long. I’m not sure it needed to run at that length and the 90
minute radio version was probably better. But it’s very good writing.
Ned
Kelly was produced on stage by various amateur companies through the
1940s and 1950s then in 1956 received a fancy professional production by
the still-fairly-new Elizabethan Theatre Trust. The Trust had enjoyed a
huge success with their first Australian play, Summer of the
Seventeenth Doll, and in looking for a second decided on Ned Kelly. I
can imagine the appeal of Stewart’s work for them: a high-brow treatment
from a well-regarded writer of a famous subject matter which had been
thoroughly road-tested on radio and amateur theatre… and it had recently
been on the BBC! (The Trust was headed by English expat Hugh Hunt, one
of far too many second-rate Englishmen sent out here to run Australian
cultural institutions.) Leo McKern, a Sydney actor who had established
an excellent reputation in London, returned to Australia to play Ned.
John Sumner (another expat Englishman) directed, with Alan Burke (later
TV director at the ABC) assisting. The idea was for the production to
start in Sydney and then move to Melbourne where it would play during
the Olympic Games.
Solid theory. Unfortunately, the production
was a commercial disaster which folded early in Sydney and never went to
Melbourne – the Trust had to quickly substitute it with another play
with McKern instead. Burke said the production simply wasn’t very good
but maybe a part was played by the aforementioned lack of public
enthusiasm for dramatisations of Kelly’s life. The stage play of Ned
Kelly has never been a commercial favourite, though amateur societies
enjoy putting it on (a list of some other Australian productions is here
at Ausstage).
The ABC did Ned Kelly on radio again in March
1959. This seemed to rekindle enthusiasm for Stewart’s work at the
national broadcaster – they had a soft spot for anything put on at the
Elizabethan Theatre Trust – and in July 1959 it was announced the play
would be filmed for television at ABC’s Melbourne studios at Ripponlea,
with the scene of Kelly’s capture shot on location at Glenrowan. It was
part of the revival in local writing at ABC television, which started in
late 1959 with Bodgie and went until early 1962.
Ned Kelly was
adapted for television and directed by William Sterling. The cast was
headed by Ken Goodlet (Ned Kelly), Syd Conabere (Joe Byrne), Alan
Hopgood (Dan Kelly), John Godfrey (Steve Hart) and Beverley Philips (the
Roo). The running time was cut down to 75 minutes.
A unit went
out to Glenrowan in late August for three days of filming. A historic
building outside the town, originally occupied by Constable Bracken, was
dressed up to look like the Royal Hotel in Jerilderie. There was also
filming at the Strathbogie Ranges and Beaconsfield. Cameraman Les Hendy
used an 18 foot hydraulic crane to film at the latter. The crew included
Brian Faull, who later became a director, as floor manager. Robert
Hughes wrote the music score, which also included bush songs from the
Kelly years.
Ned Kelly was broadcast live in Melbourne in October
1959, recorded off the screen and shown in Sydney January 1960. Janus,
the television critic for The Age felt the program was too influenced by
American Western TV shows although adding “there were many praiseworthy
features about this production” saying “the outdoor scenes were
excellently filmed and the film was blended with the studio
presentations more effectively than any ‘live’ drama I have previously
seen… The female characters… were very impressive… it was an interesting
and rewarding experiment and I for one would enjoy watching it again.”
This
review prompted a reply from William Sterling where he argued “let’s go
our own way in television and receive constructive criticism or praise
for what we attempt to do for our own history and let us not perpetuate
the purely imaginary and stereotyped methods of the average Hollywood
television film.”
The TV critic from the Sydney Morning Herald
thought the production “did a disservice to Douglas Stewart’s richly
poetic and deeply probing play” in the adaptation “which, with the real
meat of the play removed, dealt with very little except its bare
skeleton.” He complained that several important speeches were removed
and that “the play lost its proper perspective” and that William
Sterling’s direction, “after a promising beginning, failed to bring off a
number of all too tricky camera effects.”
I haven’t seen the
bulk of the 75-minute production, which would have been shot in studio
on tape (most likely this tape was wiped for re-use). However, there was
some footage shot on film and thanks to Michelle Rayner of the ABC I
have watched about 17 minutes of that. So, basically, I have seen bits
of Ned Kelly: no huge dialogue scenes, but establishers, scenes of Ned
and the gang galloping along and hanging by the campfire, and some of
the Glenrowan shoot out.
The photography is beautiful – going on
location helps marvellously. The actors do look a little too old for
their roles (Ken Goodlet was pushing 40 and Ned didn’t live past 25) but
the costumes and sets are great. It’s fascinating to wonder what this
was like to watch – I’m so glad it was made. It is, to my knowledge, the
only film made of any of Douglas Stewart’s works.
Ballad for One Gun (1963)
The
ABC returned to the Kelly story in 1963 with the Ballad for One Gun.
(Perhaps not coincidentally, that year BBC radio broadcast a serial on
the outlaw, The Last Outlaw, written by Aussie writer Rex Rienits.) This
was based on a script by Philip Grenville Mann, an Australian writer
who had worked for several years in London before returning home to
replace Rienits as drama editor at the ABC. Mann’s credits include The
Patriots, The Sergeant from Burralee, which I will write about one day,
and Ballad for One Gun. Technically, the latter was an original TV
script, although Mann had written a stage play in the 1940s called The
Kelly Country and may have repurposed material from that. Like Stewart,
Mann emphasised he was not making a strictly factual account of the
story, presumably to get all those hard core Kelly historians off his
back (there are enough of them, God knows, particularly in Victoria).
Ballad
was directed by Raymond Menmuir who had just returned to Australia
after having been in Britain for two years. Menmuir told the TV Times
that “Ned Kelly doesn’t emerge as an old style hero. The play doesn’t
attempt to sit in judgement on the Kellys either. I suppose the basic
thing is we look into Ned’s motives and how he gets further into his
career he loses sight of the original reasons for his grudge against the
police.”
I haven’t seen the production, but I have read a copy
of the script. It’s a very strong piece of drama which covers much the
same ground as Ned Kelly (Jerilderie, the death of Sherritt, Glenrowan),
albeit in more of a naturalistic way, and is full of exciting moments
such as the murder of Aaron Sherritt. Kelly’s descent into fanaticism is
well conveyed, and the build up to Glenrowan is done excitingly.
I
really, really wish I could have seen the screen version of Ballad for
One Gun because Menmuir’s production apparently was quite
expressionistic, taking design cues from Sidney Nolan’s paintings. Also,
the lead role was played by John Bell (far more age appropriate casting
than Goodlet), at the very beginning of his career, just after he’d
made a stage reputation playing Hamlet at the Old Tote.
Bell told
the TV Times the play was “definitely a new approach and a new
treatment of the whole Ned Kelly legend… We play the Kelly gang rather
like a band of young hoods, but the crux of the play is in the change of
motivations and attitudes.” He said when he heard the script was by
Mann, the actor thought it would be like The Patriots, and was surprised
when he actually read it. “It’s really way out,” said Bell. (For some
reason, Bell doesn’t mention making this play in his memoirs).
The production was shot in Sydney, the cast also included Mark McManus and a young Reg Livermore.
Valda
Marshall, TV critic for the Sunday Sydney Morning Herald (probably the
best critic of the time) called it “a beautifully written superbly
produced piece of confusion…. I am still baffled by what author Mann had
to say… It was a tricky offbeat experiment that partly came off.”
Another reviewer called it “slugging and unconvincing”.
From reading the script, these reviews are really unfair – but like I say, I haven’t seen the production. It sounds fascinating.
Still,
I think it’s awesome that the ABC did this and Ned Kelly. That’s why we
have a public broadcaster (they returned to old Ned in 1977 with The
Trial of Ned Kelly). I have often been critical of the ABC during this
period but when it came to our most (in)famous outlaw, I think they did
Australia proud.
The author would like to thank Michelle Rayner of
the ABC and Graham Shirley for their assistance with this article.
Unless otherwise specified, all opinions are my own.
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
| NAA Neil Hutchison |
 |
| NAA Neil Hutchison |
 |
| NAA Neil Hutchison |
 |
| NAA Neil Hutchison |
 |
| NAA Neil Hutchison |
 |
Leslie Rees Towards Oz Drama
|
 |
NLA Douglas Stewart
|
 |
| NLA |
 |
| NLA |
 |
| NLA |
 |
| NLA |
 |
| NLA |
 |
| NLA |
 |
| NLA |
 |
| NLA |
 |
| NLA |
 |
| NLA |
 |
| NLA |
 |
| NLA |
 |
| NLA |
 |
| NLA |
 |
| NLA |
 |
| NLA |
 |
| NLA |
 |
| NLA |
No comments:
Post a Comment