Split Level (7 Oct 1964)

 An Australian play! By Noel Robinson - an original. Directed by Ken Hannam.

Premise

Stephanie is married to architect Mike. They live in a house on Sydney's north with their two children. Stephanie hears gossip that an old school friend of hers, Rosemary, has been having an affair, leading to the end of her marriage. 

Over the course of the day, Stephanie realises that the man Rosemary has been seeing is Mike.

Cast

• Diana Davidson as Stephanie Stewart
• Leonard Teale as Mike Stewart
• Ruth Cracknell as Alison, wife of Mike's business partner
• Judi Farr as Vonnie, a friend of Stephanie's
• Joan Morrow as Janet
• Winifred Green as Mrs Stewart
• Eve Wynne as Mrs Conlon
• Muriel Hopkins as Mrs Brooks
• Pat Hill as Judy
  
• Joan Winchester as Joy
  
• Leonard Bullen as Keith
  
• Jacki Weaver as Hilary
• Jonathon Constable as Timmy
• Elizabeth Pusey as Katie
• Julianna Allan as Carol
• Max Phipps as Louis
• Barbie Rogers as Rosemary
  

Production

It was an original for TV. The ABC liked tales of adultery eg The Swagman, Marriage Lines.

The original title was A Day in the Sun and The Woman Who Has Everything. Jack Montgomery was the designer.

It was Noel Robinson's first original script produced for TV, although she had done a number of adaptations. Director Ken Hannam said "this is the best constructed TV play to come to me from a local author. I have no doubt Miss Robinson will become a most important writer in the next few years."

It was shot in Sydney at Gore Hill.

Designer- Jack Montgomery. Technical producer - Dick Cohen

Thoughts on the script.  I read a copy of the original script. Tom Stoppard once wrote a line about plays that involve infidelity amongst the architecture class (or something like that). He described this play down to a tee: it's about a housewife in the Sydney north shore (two kids, posh background, member of a playreading club) who realises her husband is having an affair with an old colleague.

Stephanie is the sort of figure who is easy to mock - gossipy, snobby, seems to have plenty of spare time (she has two kids but they are at school and she has a housekeeper), she belongs to a playreading group (they are doing The Three Sisters and this feels Chekov inspired).

It feels a little too long - the point of this is that nothing much happens but there's really only one plot (Stephanie discovering the affair). It might be better as a sixty minute story.

Interesting to get a female writer's point of view on adultery; also that shades the depiction of the relationship between Stephanie and her friends/mother/mother in law/rival.

Ken Hannam directed this. He loved the script and praised Robinson to the skies (and Hannam was notorious for whingeing about Australian writing). From what I understand Hannam was a pants man, and he probably related to the subject matter. Also, it's the sort of script where you can imagine would be enjoyed by a director who enjoyed subtle depictions of relationships.

Reception

According to the Sydney Morning Herald "as an exercise in how to make a very small amount of plot fill out an hour of television drama" the play "was technically a success" but "left a good deal to be desired" being "a soap opera transposed to the upper social scale with a faintly intellectual flavour of play-readings, feature walls and flower arrangements." The critic allowed that director Hannan "extracted welcome liveliness from plenty of scene and camera angle changes, and thus at. least kept the eye busy even when the mind tended to wander."

 

SMH 5 Oct 1964 TV Guide p 4

SMH 8 Oct 1964 p 16

Bulletin 10 July 1965 p 48

Bulletin 10 July 1965 p50

SMH Guide 5 Oct 1964

Age Guide 8 Oct 1964

Age Guide 8 Oct 1964 p2

Cover page of script

 
Forgotten Australian TV Plays: Split Level
by Stephen Vagg
May 21, 2021
In this installment of his series on forgotten Australian TV plays, Stephen Vagg takes a look at the ABC’s 1964 marital drama, Split Level.

In Tom Stoppard’s stage play The Real Thing, a character has a swipe at theatre about “infidelity among the architect class”. Everyone who’s ever subscribed to a state theatre company knows what Stoppard was getting at: stage dramas about materially wealthy, tertiary-educated middle class types who all have the right political opinions but can’t keep it in their pants. Split Level, although an original for TV, falls firmly within this genre – so firmly, it’s not just about the architect class, it’s about an actual architect.

The plot covers 24 hours in the life of Stephanie (Diana Davidson), a housewife who lives on Sydney’s north shore. Her life seems fairly blessed – she’s got a husband with a job and all his hair, a nice house, three kids, a housekeeper, friends and grandparents to help with the kids, a mother who will loan her money for renovations, and plenty of time to go to the hair salon, smoke cigarettes and hang out with mates. Then she discovers her architect husband (Leonard Teale) is having an affair with an old colleague (Barbie Rogers).

It’s a simple script, one of details and observations rather than heavy conflict, but all grounded in truth. There’s a scene where Stephanie and her fellow north shore housewives hold a play reading group and discuss Chekhov’s Three Sisters – and this piece is a little Chekhov-y, with its mixture of heartbreak and humour, and characters worried about money, love and marriage, status, the one that got away, and lost dreams.

The script was written by Noel Robinson, a female writer (often confused for a man because of her first name) who penned a lot of TV plays for the ABC in the 1960s, mostly adaptations, but this one was an original.  I know very little about Robinson, but she was clearly a skilled writer. Split Level is structurally interesting, jumping around in time with clever segues between scenes.

The play is constructed with great empathy and care. Stephanie starts off as a figure easy to mock, with her constant chatter, smoking, packed schedule of trivial tasks and palming off any household tasks to various staff/in-laws… but by the end of the play, if she hasn’t exactly grown as a person, her world has been shaken to its core, and you do feel for her.

Some scenes are extremely well observed, such as the micro-aggressions Stephanie cops from her mother in law (Winifred Green) who is only interested in her grandson, ignoring her two granddaughters; the banter among the friends (who include Judi Farr and Ruth Cracknell), with its mixture of gossip, bitchiness, banter and kindness; the wordless sympathy shown to Stephanie from her housekeeper (Muriel Brooks) and her husband’s secretary (Joan Morrow), who both clearly know what’s going on, but feel unable to raise the issue. I don’t want to be overly woke about this, but I’m not sure a male writer would have done these as well – or made the decision to tell 95% of the story from Stephanie’s point of view.

The play feels influenced by British TV dramas, with its use of understatement and non-confrontation. However, it is also a very Australian piece – references to Drysdale paintings, and council flats, and the depiction of the world, with its hairdressers, paper folding classes, and financial pressures (real and imagined), feels very authentic. (A first-rate production design job helps.)

The director was Ken Hannam, who was notorious for whingeing about Australian writing, at least later in his career, but praised this script to the skies. According to Bruce Beresford’s diaries, Hannam was a pants man in real life, and he probably related to the subject matter. Also, it’s the sort of script where you can imagine would appeal to a director who enjoyed subtle depictions of relationships.

The cast is fascinating. Apart from Diana Davidson, who does well in a tricky role, it includes the deep-voiced Leonard Teale as the tormented, cheating husband, Ruth Cracknell (who’s typically superb) as a sympathetic friend of Stephanie’s, Judi Farr as a dim friend, Jacki Weaver no less as Stephanie’s eldest child, and Max Phipps no less as a gossipy gay hairdresser. Winifred Greene is a splendidly awful mother-in-law.

Incidentally, a number of early Australian TV plays concerned infidelity among married couples. When the cheater was a man, viewers seemed to rarely blink an eye (Marriage Lines, A Season in Hell, Hot Potato Boys, Flowering Cherry, Don’t Listen Ladies, The Four Poster). When the cheater was a woman, people wrote furious letters to the editor declaring how disgusted they were (The Multi Coloured Umbrella, The Swagman). Split Level received good reviews and then, like all too many Australian TV plays, appears to have been completely forgotten.

I don’t think Split Level is a masterpiece, but it is a very well-realised television play and a tribute to the skill of Noel Robinson, a writer that should be better known. It’s the sort of TV play we should have been making in the fifties, and we could have if given the opportunity, but we got there eventually. It was a pleasure to watch.

NLA Throssell