Australian TV Plays: Play of Daniel (13 Dec 1961)

Play based on a medieval play, The Play of Daniel, performed in St Mary's Cathedral.

Premise

In Babylon at the time of King Belshazzar, writing on the wall warns the prophet Daniel about the destruction that will accompany the arrival of Darius, leader of the Medes and the Persians. The counsellor turns King Darius against Daniel.

Cast

Richard Connolly as Daniel
Stewart Ogilvie as Prince
John Brosnan as Darius
James Condon as Narrator
Anne Della-Bosca as Queen
Robert Moore as Belshazzar
Robyn Hannon
John Robertson

Original play

The play dates from the middle ages. Specially it was a 13th-century drama with monophonic music, written about 1227 to 1234 by students at the school of Beauvais Cathedral, located in northern France.

A large portion of the text is poetic rather than strictly liturgical in origin; it closely follows the narrative of the biblical story of Daniel at the court of Belshazzar.

It was revived in the 1950s by Noah Greenberg, director of the New York Pro Musica; a commentary in English, written and performed by W. H. Auden, was used in some of their performances, such as this one. A recording of a performance of the play was available to Australian consumers in 1961.

Listen to an album here.

1961 Australian stage production

The play, directed by James Lang, was presented at St Mary's Crypt in August 1961 by the Guild of St Pius X. It was the first time the play had been performed in Australa.

The play was in Latin with some lines in French and an English commentary. Lang called it "a twelfth century opera".

Nugget Coombes went to see the production. It was very popular.

The production was revived in November.

The ABC decided to do a live broadcast of the play which aired in December 1961.

Other adaptations

It was done on BBC radio in 1959.

Production

The play was set entirely to music. Richard Connolly was involved in the music.

It was shot in Sydney under the direction of Colin Dean who had spent most of 1961 directing The Outcasts.

Dean later recalled in an interview for the ABC Gore Hill website:

"The first 'built' OB that the Drama Dept did was 'The play of Daniel' performed in the crypt of St. Mary's Cathedral. We took over one side of the crypt and had the cameras going up and down. It took me about 10 days to plot that play. I played the track of the 'Play of Daniel' over and over again with a stop watch and trying to visualise each camera shot, each camera movement. Clem Semmler was on the blower while the end credits were running saying that "this was the most marvellous bit of television that I have ever seen!" So I was very chuffed about this. It was not only me - it was the marvellous cast. They do not do such things nowadays in television."

Dean said similar things in an interview with Graham Shirley. He said he spent ten days plotting the play according to the music. He did this at the Drama Debt at Forbes Street.

Reception

The Australian Woman's Weekly said "I have never seen finer television."

Dean told Graham Shirley that the then acting head of ABC drama Paul O'Loughlin disliked the play - Dean thought that might've been because he and the others at Forbes St got sick of listening to Dean listen to the music. Dean says O'Loughlin ordered the tapes wiped so it was never repeated.

Dean later got the man who did the music, Richard Connolly, to do the music for The Long Sunset. Connolly later became Director of Radio Drama and Featrues at the ABC from 1973.