Nuns behaving badly. Based on an Australian play. Part of the Seek and Destroy anthology series.
Premise
Sister Catherine is in charge of a school for delinquent girls. She resents having being passed over as Mother Superior of the Convent. Mother Denis decides to give Catherine's job to Sister Matthew. Sister Catherine sides with a young nun, Sister Lenora, who has broken the discipline of the convent.
When the Mother Superior dies, Sister Catherine, who was in charge of the convent infirmary and drugs, comes under suspicion.
Cast
- Ruth Cracknell as Sister Catherine
- June Winchester as Mother Denis
- Shirley Cameron as Sister Mathew
- Betty Lucas as Sister Lenora
- Don Crosby as Father Morris
- Sheila Kennelly as Sister Veynard
- Doreen Warburton as Sister Gonzaga
- Sue Costin as Eileen
- Donald Philps as sergeant
- Michelle Fawdon as Beth
- Carla Seitz as Lois
- Janie Stewart, Kay Eklund, Lyn Lee, Pat Bishop, Eve Hardwick, Eve Wynn as nuns
- Deborah Marsh, Julie Spencer, Estelle Myers as girls
Original play
The play was written by Robert Wales. Wales was a Scotsman who moved to Australia after the war. A brief bio is here. He also wrote The Hobby Horse a 1962 Oz TV play.
Wales based the play on a true incident where a young nun murdered her mother superior.Wales was not Catholic but his wife was and his five children were raised Catholics.
The play was performed at Sydney's Independent Theatre as a play reading. It was commended in a 1965 Elizabethan Theatre Trust play competition.
It was so well received it was produced in 1966. A review of that is here. Anne Haddy and Pat McDonald was in it and Peter Summerton directed.
The production toured to Canberra. A review of that is here. It was performed in Melbourne as well in 1966.
The play was published in 1971.
Other productions
It was also adapted for television by the BBC in England as A Swallow's Nest in 1968.
(Wales did some BBC radio work in the 1970s such as this Explorers on Burke and Wills.)
Production
It was shot in Sydney.
Director John Croyston decided to film the action all in one take "to enable the cast to hold the edge of emotional distraction. Ruth Cracknell... is on the edge of insanity all the way. If we stopped and started she would find it hard to get back to pitch."
Croyston confirmed this in a 2004 interview with Graham Shirley. He said it was shot in July 1968 shot through without a stop except Jeff Brown ran over a cable so it went into two and "we had to pick up after that" but that it was plotted, planned and rehearsed as one non-stop event.
Production assistant - Brian Shannon. Script assistant - Brenda Levy. Cameras - Carl Schultz, Jeff Brown, Peter Knevitt, Richard Bond. Audio - John Bourn. Vision mixer - Bruce Wilson. Lighting - John Wharton. Technical production - Dick Cohen. Design - Francesca Crespi. Producer and director - John Croyston.
The NAA have a copy. Info here.
Reception
The Sydney Morning Herald called the production "a victory for the local industry".
The same reviewer later called it one of the best TV plays of the year saying "for writing and execution this play had class, high class."
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| SMH 30 Dec 1968 p 8 |
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| SMH 4 Sept 1968 p 6 |
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| The Age TV Guide 19 Sept 1968 p 11 |
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| SMH 14 Aug 1966 p 14 |
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| The Age TV Guide 29 Aug 1968 p 3 |
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| Canberra Times 8 June 1966 p 21 |
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| SMH 5 Sept 1968 p 6 |
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| SMH 10 Feb 1966 p 30 |
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| NAA script |
Forgotten Australian TV Plays: The Cell
by Stephen Vagg
May 26, 2021
Stephen Vagg’s series on forgotten Australian TV plays looks at a tale of nuns behaving badly: 1968’s The Cell.
There was (is?) an old Australian TV saying that “nuns always rate”. And when you look back, the Australian public has displayed an enthusiasm to observe the adventures of that brethren: All Saints, Brides of Christ, The Flying Nun, The Sound of Music, Heaven Knows Mr Allison. I’m not sure how the 1968 TV play The Cell rated, but it deserved to do well, because it’s a fascinating, thought-provoking piece of television.
It was made as an episode of Seek and Destroy, a short-lived anthology at the ABC, which consisted of four BBC plays and one Australian play – The Cell was the Australian play. It was based on a 1966 stage play written by Robert Wales, a Scotsman who emigrated to Australia after the war and became a grazier then writer. The play had been quite successful for an Australian drama in the 1960s, being performed in a number of cities, and filmed by British TV (as A Swallow’s Nest) in 1968.
The Cell concerns an order of nuns who run a school for delinquent girls – a concept so strong that it would make an amazing TV series. The emphasis is not so much on the students, however, but the nuns – in particular, an attempt to by the mother superior, Mother Denis (June Winchester), to move the charismatic but troublesome Sister Catherine (Ruth Cracknell) from her job of being in charge of supervising the girls. Matters are complicated by the vague Sister Lenora (Betty Lucas), a Sister Catherine ally, and ambitious Sister Matthew (Shirley Cameron), who is to take over Sister Catherine’s job.
It’s a classic workplace drama in other words, a battle of wills between two nuns, which takes an unexpected twist when Mother Denis winds up dead… possibly killed by Sister Catherine performing a sort of voodoo ceremony/poison. That sounds weird, I know, but it works, helped by Cracknell’s amazing performance as a nun having a breakdown… but not necessarily wrong (Mother Denis is shown to be quite controlling).
In order to assist Cracknell’s performance, director John Croyston elected to shoot the whole play in one take – which was how all TV plays used to be done, but by 1968 had become rare; he was rewarded with superb work not just by Cracknell but all the cast. Don Crosby plays the only sizeable male role, a visiting priest. One of the delinquent students is played by Sue Costin, a model and actor who was briefly a regular on the TV series Riptide (1969) and who committed suicide in a Bondi motel in 1971. Another student was played by Michelle Fawdon, who later won an AFI for Cathy’s Child. I wish more had been done with the student characters but then it only clocks in at 70 minutes and the meaty stuff is all with the nuns.
I’m surprised that The Cell isn’t performed on stage more – it’s got fantastic roles for women, is not inherently expensive once you’ve got your nun’s habits, and tackles all sorts of interesting themes (the notion of power, doing good, how to punish, etc). I’ve got no idea what happened to Robert Wales after this – presumably he had to focus on earning a living. At least he got to see The Cell be given a very good small screen treatment.
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