Night of the Ding Dong (3 May 1961)

 Australian story.

Premise

In 19th century Adelaide, after the Crimean War, Colonial Administrator Colonel Beauchamp, trains a volunteer defence corps at the weekends, and worries about a Russian invasion. 

Idealistic schoolteacher Higsen, who is in love with Beauchamp's daughter, is more concerned with free education. Higsen asks Beauchamp to marry the latter's daughter but is turned down because education must give way to defence.

When a Russian gunboat is rumoured to be near Adelaide, Beauchamp sets about whipping up the public into a frenzy in order to fund a standing army. 

Cast

• Michael Duffield as Col Beauchamp
• Madeline Howell as Victoria Beauchamp
• David Mitchell as Marcus Higson
• Anne Charleston as Louise
• Campbell Copelin as Mr Kelp
• Keith Hudson as Mr Smedly
• Charles Sinclair as Mr Nash
• Carole Potter as Abigail
• Roland Redshaw as Captain Manley
• Stewart Weller as Jeffries
• Eric Conway as gardener
• Nevil Thurgood as gardener

 Original play

Peterson said he was told the story about a rumoured Russian invasion by his grandmother when he was a child. He came across the story years later when researching another project and decided to write it. 

"It was amazing how Adelaide was completely swept away by the invasion scare," said Peterson to the TV Times. "Why, I don't know. Even Sydney folk were worried. This led to fortifications being built at Fort Denison, South Head and other places, while in Adelaide, Fort Glandore, Fort Glenelg, and later Fort Largs were built."

I think this was written in 1954. It was Peterson's second play after The Square Ring. But it doesn't seem to have been produced until it aired on British TV.  An article here says it played on stage outside London. It didn't make it to London.

Peterson told Graham Shirley in his NFSA oral history the play was originally called Night of the Russians but it had to change the title because they disliked the word "Russian" in the title. Peterson blamed this on McCarthyism. He says in the interview it had a go at the New Theatre in Melbourne first - he may've been confused.

There were reports of it being tried out at the New Theatre in Sydney in 1957. 

He said Max Harris showed him a harsh review accused him of being anti communist.

A 1966 review of a stage production said it was originally a one act play.

A review of the play from the Australasian Drama Studies Journal (Plays of the ‘50s, Volume 1
Novakovic, Jasna.  Australasian Drama Studies; St. Lucia Iss. 53,  (Oct 2008): 225-228. )

Ralph Peterson mocks the military in much the same way as Gray, except that he again refracts the sense of immediacy through the prism of the past. Night of the Ding Dong (1959) takes place in circa 1870 and is a drawing-room comedy based on a historical event. Written at the height of the Cold War, five years after the Petrov Commission, it taps on the hatred of communist Russia only to mock the calls for security when no imminent threat is in sight and to promote compulsory education rather than the maintenance of the standing army. The play is in itself educational as it demystifies fear fabricated by political propaganda and unmasks the vested interests of the establishment. It is also reconciliatory, as everyone gives ground a little and the love story entwined with the social themes has a happy end. Like the plays of Shaw, his play revisits an authentic experience in a critical but playful manner that offends no one and yet urges the spectator/reader to reflect on the state of public schools in Australia of today, on the 'war against terror' policy and the attendant security issues. Peterson further reflects on truth in a manner reminiscent of Shaw. The elderly Mrs Beauchamp admonishes young Marcus: 'You told him the truth! Surely that's enough to make anybody angry' (160). The sense of living in the middle of 'nowhere' is only implicit in this play. The myth quickly spun around a Russian ship spotted 'in the mid-ocean' is really only possible because of isolation and because of the colonial attitude that takes the centre versus margin hierarchy as the norm.

1958 British TV Adaptation

The play was adapted for British TV in 1958 as part of Armchair Theatre.  

 Variety said "What started out as an apparently serious and thought-provoking play quickly developed into rather pointless farce."

Other adaptations

It appears to have been first produced on stage in Australia in 1959. It played at the New Theatre in Melbourne in 1959.

The play was also adapted for radio on the ABC in 1961. And in 1965.

In 1966 the South Australian Theatre Group toured the play. A review in Sydney is here. It had a great success.

Production

Rex Rienits wrote to Peterson in December 1960 asking about the play which he saw three years ago in Bromley Rep. "This was given a rather poor production, but I remember it as a very amusing play, which quite a few things to say about war, courage, cowardice and so on. I would think this would adapt very well for television, and with its Victorian settings and costumes it would also look very good." Peterson wrote back to George Kerr, doing Rienits' job in his absence, and was keen.

The show was broadcast live from the ABC's studios in Melbourne.  It was originally meant to be shot in Sydney then was shifted to Melbourne (see below).

It was the TV debut for Ann Charleston. 

Jeff Underhill did the adaptation.  I've read the script and it's a lot of fun. Lacks a third act.

My thoughts on the script 

 I've wanted to read this a long time because of the central idea: a fear of Russian invasion in 19th century Adelaide. This was something very common in Australia at the time and prompted the building of all these random forts. 

It was a play by Ralph Peterson, not very well remembered but a leading writer from the time - he wrote the hit play The Square Ring. Peterson was from Adelaide and satirises the city with an insider's empathy/knowledge: the boredom, the standing on ceremony, the social progression.

The chief conflict is between the militaristic governor and a school teacher who wants money for compulsory education and the hand of the governor's daughter in marriage. That is a very good personalisation of the conflict; the character of the daughter is more vague, but she has some strong lines and the mother (bored, keen on war to break monotony) is a lot of fun. The villain is Kelp, an armaments manufacturer. He was played on TV by Campbell Copelin, one of my favourite old school actors because he once stole an airplane while drunk and crashed it in a golf course; I recognise how dangerous that was, but its sheer ambition is very endearing.

This adapts well to 45 minutes. It it was to last longer I think it runs in to problems because there was no actual invasion, or Russians. For a feature length I think you'd need some Russians to wash up on shore, like in The Russians are Coming The Russians are Coming and/or have a genuine villain. But at 45 minutes it's fine.

Ann Charleston was the ingenue in this. She played a lot of ingenues in early Australian TV. Good old Madge!

Reception

The critic from the Sydney Morning Herald thought that "uniform competence in acting could not-altogether suggest the whimsy inherent in" the play, adding that "William Sterling's production was directed primarily at extracting every ounce of farce.

TV Times said "what a pleasure it was to see a rip roaring farce from Two on Wednesday, after the pall of gloom which seems tp have descended of late on those responsible for choosing its plays! This latest Melbourne production, The Night of the Ding Dong, was one of the most entertaining pieces of nonsense I've seen in a long time. I am not sure how much of the comedy was due ot its author, Ralph Peterson, and how much to William Sterling's imaginative production. Mercifully Mr Sterling eliminated the preaching element and left, in the main, a masterpiece of absurdity. Jeffrey Underhill's adaptation was a thoroughly competent job, though it could have been better still had he cut the play at, say, Kelp the builder's e nthusiastic patronage of free education, with the propsect of collecting the contracts for building the schools. There was sermon enough, but subtle sermonising, in the lightly drawn, self seeking of the various interests in the town, and there would have been no final let-down in the adaptation as we saw it. Apart from this, however, The Night of the Ding Dong was a joyous send up of military, professional and industrial leaders. William Sterling showed a strong comic imagination. Treating the play as farce, but solemn face, he filled it with small, telling touches which added immeasurably to the whole effect. The production was the star... The music rates a special mention... The play was bulled as a satire; without that last scene it would have been a very good satire."

The LITV called it "good full bellied comedy... should give us more confidence in our ability to handle the delicate, tricky art of making laughter. Even if it wasn't a world beater, it had the ingredients... Underhill has turned out a script tailor-made for the little screen... directed the show with a nicely judged balance between farce and edged satire... Ratings for Australian drama would rise sharply if managements could learn the combination which unlocks Australian talent in the light hearted, adult mood of Night of the Ding Dong."

The Age 27 April 1961 p 18

The Age Supplement 27 April 1961 p 3

SMH 13 July 1961 p 4

Review of 1958 British TV - Variety 12 Feb 1958 p 48

 

SMH 10 July 1961 p 14

The Age 3 May 1961 p 5

The Age 3 May 1961 p 6

The Age Supplement 27 Apri 1961 p 1

TV Times 1961

Variety review of stage production 24 Aug 1966

Vic TV Times

Vic TV Times

Forgotten Australian TV Plays: The Square Ring and Night of the Ding Dong
by Stephen Vagg
January 3, 2022
Stephen Vagg’s series on forgotten Australian TV plays takes a look at two by Adelaide writer Ralph Peterson, The Square Ring and Night of the Ding-Dong.

Copies of most early Australian television plays no longer exist – particularly those pre-1962. This limits the ability to discuss them, which is frustrating since so many are culturally important: like, say, The Sub-Editors’ Room (1957), the first locally written TV play ever broadcast on Australian TV, or Lola Montez (1962), the small screen version of the Australian musical.

One never knows when a copy is going to pop up of course, but if that isn’t an option, the historian is forced to take alternative action. Fortunately, there are other sources: contemporary reviews, scripts at the National Archives of Australia, interviews at the National Film and Sound Archive, contracts, original source material and so on.

Today, I’d like to look at two television plays, neither of which I have actually seen, but for both of which I’ve managed to collect a fair amount of information. These are The Square Ring and Night of the Ding Dong, both written by Ralph Peterson (1921-1996).

Peterson is one of those Australian writers who should be better remembered than he is, having contributed to several cultural classics. First was the hugely popular radio comedy series Yes, What? (1937-41), which Peterson starred in and helped write; this show, about the antics of teachers and students at a school, was so beloved that “best of” tapes of it were released years later, and my father (a big fan) forced me to listen to them. (Side note: why did they never adapt Yes, What? into a TV series? It would have seemed a natural.) Second was My Name‘s McGooley What’s Yours? (1966-68), the first hugely popular Australian sitcom; Peterson wrote most of the episodes.

They were just chapters in a long career. Peterson grew up in Adelaide, starting in the business as a child actor for radio. After war service, he returned to that medium as an actor and writer, also doing some work on stage (he was in the cast of an early production of Rusty Bugles). He wrote a radio feature (semi-documentary) called The Problem of Johnny Flourcake (1950), which impressed its star, visiting British actor Anthony Quayle, who encouraged Peterson to try his luck in the UK.

The young man went there in 1950 along with his wife, actor Betty Lucas, and wound up writing for Tony Hancock and Benny Hill, among others. Peterson would go back and forth between the UK and Australia over the next fifteen years, his credits during this period including episodes of Whiplash!, the Australian film Three in One (1957), and The Square Ring and Night of the Ding Dong...

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Night of the Ding Dong (1961)

Night of the Ding Dong was also based on a stage play by Peterson, though one very different in tone. It’s set in 19th century colonial Adelaide when the local populace is gripped by fears of a Russian invasion (a very real “stupid fear” all around Australia at that time – a lot of old-time forts such as Fort Denison were constructed to scare off possible Russian gunboats).

The main personal conflict revolves around Colonial Administrator Colonel Beauchamp, who trains a volunteer defence corps at the weekends, and whose daughter is in love with an idealistic schoolteacher concerned with free education.

This play toured English provinces but never made it to London. It’s very fun and bright and the subject matter is strong – similar to the successful Hollywood film The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming (1966).

I think the reason Ding Dong never enjoyed the success of that or The Square Ring was because the drama lacks underlying stakes – there is no threat (in The Russians Are Coming, there are Russians lost on shore and if they get caught, they will be in serious trouble). I think if Ding Dong had some actual Ruskies turn up in act three, Peterson would have had a big hit; the initial idea is so clever and the characters so lively.

Still, the play was popular with Australian theatre companies, was published in book form, and was adapted for British TV in 1958, three years before the ABC got around to filming it in Melbourne. The cast for the latter included Michael Duffield (Col Beauchamp), Madeline Howell (Victoria Beauchamp), David Mitchell as Marcus Higson and Anne “Madge from Neighbours” Charleston (Louise) in the lead.

It was Charleston’s TV debut [pictured]. Jeff Underhill adapted Peterson’s play for the small screen and William Sterling directed.

I have read the script. It was cut down to under an hour, which normally I’m not a fan of, but in the case of Ding Dong actually is a good thing – the aforementioned absence of stakes isn’t as noticeable. Again, I would love to have seen this. A contemporary review is here.

Peterson returned to Australia permanently in the mid ‘60s, where he had his greatest success with McGooley and its sequel Rita and Wally (1968). For all of his career, Peterson alternated between TV, film, theatre and books, finding the going harder towards the end of his life – his papers at the State Library of NSW are full of rejections from publishers in the 1990s, proving that in the arts you can never be too old or successful to be ignored.

Ralph Peterson’s career was at its peak in the 1950s and 1960s – which was also the peak time TV executives would whine that “there are no good writers in Australia”. He disproved that time and time again, two of his finest exhibits being The Square Ring and Night of the Ding Dong. Not that I’ve ever seen them!
The author would like to thank Graham Shirley and the staff at the State Library of NSW for their assistance with researching this piece. All opinions are my own.

LITV

Sevenoaks Chronicle 14 Jun 1957

Daily Tele 3 Feb 1958