Australian TV Plays: The Ides of March (21 Dec 1961)

Based on a Thornton Wilde novel. The second the ABC did, after The Skin of Our Teeth. It is odd that this was a novel - most ABC dramas were based on plays.

Premise

A fantasia on certain events and persons in the last days of the Roman Republic, around the time of the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC.

Cast

Brian James as Caesar
Lynn Flanagan as Claudia
Bruce Barry as Brutus
Edward Brayshaw as Catullus
Don Crosby as Cassius
Keith Dare as Casca
Edward Howell as Decius
Fay Kelton as Pompeia
Kevin McBeath as Cicero
David Mitchell as Clodius
Dennis Mitchell as Marc Antony
Carole Potter as Cleopatra

Original novel

The novel was published in 1948. Wilder's website called it "a brilliant epistolary novel set in Julius Caesar’s Rome. Thornton Wilder called it “a fantasia on certain events and persons of the last days of the Roman republic.” Through vividly imagined letters and documents, Wilder brings to life a dramatic period of world history and one of history’s most magnetic, elusive personalities. In this inventive narrative, the Caesar of history becomes Caesar the human being. Wilder also resurrects the controversial figures surrounding Caesar — Cleopatra, Catullus, Cicero, and others. All Rome comes crowding through these pages — the Rome of villas and slums, beautiful women and brawling youths, spies and assassins."

Another appreciation is here.

Borrow a copy here.

Other adaptation

John Gielgud did it on stage in 1963. Review here. So was Australia the original? Burke says was based on a TV script though. Maybe used it before it was filmed./

It was adapted for BBC TV in 1964. Adapted by Jerome Kitty.

Production

It was shot in Melbourne. Stanley Miller did the adaptation.

Director William Sterling said at the time:

There is no beginning, middle or end in the recognised manner. Rather the treatment will be impressionistic and sstylised with much of the action mimed by the characters to prerecorded speech. The form of the novel is followed closely and the TV screen can 'picture' the thoughts of the principal characters as well as illustrating the events that have provoked these thoughts. There will be dialogue scenes as well but the play concentrates on centralising the character of Caesar against a vast background canvas that recreates the turbulent of the first century of Rome.

More than 500 yards of material were used to make 24 costumes, five for Cleopatra.

Alan Burke talked about this in a 2004 interview with Graham Shirley:

There was one terrible experience later in the years, I forget when that fell, but Thornton Wilder’s The Ides of March one of my very favourite novels, had been done by the Royal Court I think in a stage adaptation in London and I thought ‘oh wouldn’t that be fun’. Suddenly I read about a television production of it and I asked if we could get the script of that and we did and I was looking at that and hoping to do it in about six months time. Suddenly Melbourne were caught in some sort of loop whereby they didn’t have a play for the slot in June which had to rehearse tomorrow and so the Head of Drama said ‘I sent them The Ides of March’. I said ‘what’ and was told ‘no, I was now required to do ‘x’’ and was given another play which I hated and which incidentally had already been done in Melbourne a couple of years before and nobody had remember. So things were a bit random about that time. But mostly I could select my own plays.

Reception

The TV critic from the Sydney Morning Herald thought "nothing could have seemed less promising" than an adaptation of the novel, which did not seem suited to television, but "the results were surprisingly successful" praising the writing and direction.

TV Times called it "world class".