Adaptation of the great Australian play which the ABC wanted to do back in the 1958.
Premise
An Italian family adjusts to life in Australia in working class Collingwood.
Cast
- Tom Oliver as Clarry
- Alan Bickford as Gino
- Syd Conabere as Poppa
- Penny Shelton as Leila
- Madge Ryan as Momma (Madge Ryan appeared courtesy of Aztec Services)
- Anne Charleston as Maria
- Terry Norris as Donny
- Blair Edgar as Lukie
- Burt Cooper, Berys Marsh
Original Play
The play won first prize in the Journalists Club 1956 Competition for the best Australian Play. This was awarded in January 1957. Beynon was then 29 and appearing in a production on stage of Witness for the Prosecution however he had spent most of the previous ten years in London acting (he was in the BBC radio production of Robbery Under Arms alongside Don Sharp).
Beynon talks about writing the play in this piece here for ABC Weekly. He started it in London but wrote the last two acts in Australia appearing in Witness. It was the first play he completed. He says he was inspired by reading about the suicide of a Polish immigrant in London. He made the immigrants Australian because they were the largest group of "new Australians" in Australia and he had lived in Ital.
Beynon won 250 pounds. Second place was The Multi Coloured Umbrella - this piece says that was written by Martin Ashby. Other plays commended included Royal Tour by Oriel Grey, Swamp Creatures by Alan Seymour and A Kiss and a Promise by Ric Throssell. Sir William Slim presented the award in February 1957 at a luncheon - Vernon was credited in this piece here
There was a lot of talk about this being the follow up to the Doll as in this piece. Hugh Hunt of the Trust said it was the best Australian play he'd read since The Doll. An ABC Weekly piece wrote the same thing.
In the 1950s Australian theatre was dominated by expat Englishmen such as Hugh Hunt, Alan Edwards, Robert Quentin and John Sumner. Read When London Calls see here.
London Observor Award
In August 1957 the play was awarded shared 3rd prize in a play competition by the London Observer. There were nearly 2000 entries - of the 25 finalists, four were Australian. (Other plays: Ray Mathew, The Life of the Party - performed in London in 1960. I think The Bastard Country was also mentioned.) A list of the winners is here. The judges were Alec Guinness, Peter Ustinov, Peter Hall, head of BBC drama Michael Barry. Tynan's piece is here.
Ken Tynan wrote about Australian drama noting the influence of Tennessee Williams:
The recent growth of the narrative arts in this restless new country has been something to marvel at: a rich well is already spurting and may at any moment gush. One swallow doesn’t make a summer and one “Summer of the Seventeenth Doll” doesn’t make a golden age: all the same, the omens are joyfully good .... I would not be surprised if in the next few years, Australia were to produce an indigenous O’Neill or Tennessee Williams. ..Major influence: Tennessee Willams but a Williams tanned and muscular, with neuroses kept to a minimum.
The Bulletin wrote of Tynan's comments "he means well of course" then whinged about them.
Some of these plays were published in 1958 as the Observer Plays. See here. A review of that is here.
Original Sydney Production
The Shifting Heart premiered at the Elizabethan Theatre in Sydney in October 1957, presented by the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust. An advertisement is here.
It toured nationally for a year. Apparently Beynon insisted it premiere in Australia first.
The original program is here.
A list of performances in Australia via Ausstage is here. Review of 1962 Melbourne proudction is here.
English theatre version
In March 1958 it was reported Sir Laurence Olivier bought the stage rights. In May 1959 it was announced Olivier would produce it later that year. Rehearsals would begin in July.
The play debuted in England in 1959. It premiered 10 August 1959 in Nottingham a co production between Oliver and the Trust. Four Australians were in the cast - Ken Warren (Clarry), Madge Ryan, David Nettheim, and Alex Scott. Leo McKern directed.
Reviews were positive.Mostly. The Observer review is here.
It played a West End season at the Duke of York's Theatre. But it only ran three weeks. 24 performances. Nice comments. Some talk of it going to Broadway. Didn't happen. April 1961 Olivier said would produce The One Day of the Year.
Radio adaptations
The ABC made a radio version of the play in 1962. They adapted it again in 1965.
The BBC adapted it for radio in 1968 with Alan White as Clarry.
Other adaptations
In August 1957 Beynon said that Columbia Pictures were interested in filming it. See here.
It was filmed for Italian TV in 1964.
It was published in 1961. See a Bulletin review here.
1962 British TV Version
There was a British TV version in 1962 which screened in Australia in 1962. The cast included Keith Michell (Clarry), Madge Ryan (Leila) and Reg Lye (Donnie).
In January 1958 the ABC said it was negotiating for the rights - see here.
The ABC intended to use it to open their new Melbourne studios. But after the Multi Coloured Umbrella incident they changed it to Captain Carvallo.
In 1962 General Motors Hour said they were going to make it that year. See here.
The 1968 Australian TV production also starred Madge Ryan who had appeared in the premiere season of the play, only then she played Leila the neighbour and now she played Momma .
Oscar Whitbread directed. Whitbread called it one of "best plays ever written by an Australian. When he wrote it [in 1956] it was probably ahead of its time. People today, through experience, are far more aware of in justice and intolerance towards migrants".
In an oral history interview (I think with Wendy Muller) he said it was "a very good challenge for me".
Crew
Film sequences: photography - Heinz Voelzer, sound - John Ryan, editing - Ted Lowe. Music composed and conducted by Frank Smith. Make up - Marjorie Reid. Lighting - Harry Myers. Technical production - Brian Rodgers. Design - Kevin Bartlett. Producer and director - Oscar Whitbread.
Reception
The Age said "the entirety works despite some straying accents." See here
The Stage called it "a very good production."
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| The Stage 24 Dec 1969 |
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| The Age 27 June 1968 TV Guide p 3 |
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| SMH 7 Aug 1968 p 20 |
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| The Age 15 Aug 1968 TV Guide p 1 |
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| Canberra Times7 Aug 1968 p 12 |
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| Elizabethan Trust |
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| The Age 21 Aug 1968 p 6 |
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| SMH 5 Aug 1968 TV Guide |
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| The Age 16 Sept 1959 |
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| SMH 5 Sept 1983 |
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| SMH 5 Oct 1957 |
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| GMH People May 1962 |
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| The Age 31 Jan 1958 |
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| Observer 18 Aug 1957 p 11 |
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Forgotten Australian TV Plays: The Shifting Heart
by Stephen Vagg
June 7, 2021
Stephen Vagg’s series on forgotten Australian TV plays looks at an adaptation of a stage play that is definitely not forgotten: Richard Beynon’s drama, The Shifting Heart.
The Shifting Heart is, arguably, the second most famous Australian stage work of the 1950s. It never had the fame, or earning power, of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, but has carved out its own niche and still gets regularly revived. It was never turned into a feature film, but was adapted for TV by the ABC in 1968.
The author of The Shifting Heart was Richard Beynon, an actor and writer from Carlton who emigrated to the UK in the 1940s. The play (Beynon’s first) tells the story of an Italian immigrant family living in the Melbourne suburb of Collingwood: parents Poppa and Momma, and their adult son Gino. On Christmas Eve, they are visited by their heavily pregnant adult daughter Maria and her Anglo husband Clarry. Clarry works with Gino but is reluctant to go into partnership with him. Gino gets in clashes with Anglo locals at the neighbourhood dance, a propensity that eventually leads to tragedy and places pressure on Clarry and Maria’s marriage.
The Shifting Heart won a 1956 Sydney Journalists Club Award and came third in the London Observer World Play Award Competition. The Australian premiere happened in 1957 through the Elizabethan Theatre Trust, and the play enjoyed a run on England’s West End in 1959 where it was appreciatively reviewed by Ken Tynan. The ABC expressed interest in adapting it for TV as early as 1958 but it took a decade for them to achieve this (presumably this was a matter of obtaining the rights, or Aunty may have been scared off filming it after the response to their version of another local play about the lusty working class, The Multi-Coloured Umbrella). It was filmed for British TV in 1962, under the direction of Lionel Harris (who later came to Australia to make the TV play Kain), starring several expat Aussies such as Keith Michell and Reg Lye.
The 1968 Australian TV version of The Shifting Heart was shot in Melbourne under the direction of Oscar Whitbread. The cast included Tom Oliver (Clarry), Syd Conabere (Poppa), Madge Ryan (Momma), Anne Charleston (Maria), and Allen Bickford (Gino). The best-known cast member at the time was Ryan, who had a huge career in England.
The play is ideal for television because it mostly takes place in a cramped, working class house.
It’s a faithful adaptation, and is mostly shot like a stage play, with a few location scenes thrown in, such as when Gino gets hassled at a groovy ‘60s nightclub full of boomers gyrating and/or being racist. It’s well written with a more subtle take on racism than expected: Clarry thinks he’s a good bloke and isn’t prejudiced, but comes to realise that he’s more uptight than he first thought. There’s some neat period touches such as Gino singing “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”.
The big stumbling block of the TV version of The Shifting Heart – for me at any rate – was the fact that all the Italian roles are played by non-Italian actors who use broad accents for their parts, particularly Conabere. I presume this was because “there were no good Italian actors available” (the stock excuse)… and it’s got to be said that all the actors are excellent, it just took me a while to adjust to the pronunciation.
Tom Oliver plays Clarry in a cheery hail-fellow-well met style that was not what I got of the character reading the play, but actually works terrifically well; in addition, Neighbours fans will love seeing him play an on-screen husband to Anne Charleston, who was Madge on Neighbours. Some of it is very moving. I hadn’t seen Allen Bickford in anything before this: he has an intense screen presence that is very effective.
Despite the success of The Shifting Heart, Beynon did not seem to be that keen on theatre (he was probably wise: few Australian playwrights manage long stage careers). Instead, he moved into British television, having a lot of success as a writer, story editor and producer of shows such as Z Cars and Rebecca. He did occasionally write the odd script for Australian TV, such as Man in a Blue Vase (1960) and Face of a Man (1970), but the bulk of his career was in England.
The Shifting Heart is an important Australian play, and it received a worthy production from the ABC in 1968. It’s just a shame that it is so hard to see: surely there would be some sort of audience for these pieces (and small screen adaptations of other classic Oz stage works like Rusty Bugles and The Torrents), even if purely from an educational point of view?
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| The Age 1 Aug 1963 |
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| NAA Neil Hutchison |
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| Age 21 Aug 1968 |
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