The Slaughter of St Teresa's Day (23 March 1960)

Adaptation of the play by Peter Kenna. I've seen it. It's very enjoyable.

Plot

Oola Maguire is throwing a St. Theresa's Day Party for her clients and friends, along with her right "hand" Essie Farrell. She has a party every year on that day to celebrate surviving the time she was shot by a gunman. Her rules for the party are no guns and no alcohol. Oola also does not invite any women.

Before the guests arrive she is introduced to Horrie, a friend of her associate Charlie Gibson; Horrie has just got out of prison after serving a five-year sentence. Other guests include Whitey Maguire, who has just got out of prison after two years, and his girlfriend Wilma Cartwright, a former prostitute; Oona wants to reconcile Whitey with his father Paddy.

Oola's 16-year-old convent educated daughter Thelma visits the party accompanied by two nuns, Sister Mary Luke and Sister Mary Mark. Oola is considering becoming a nun.

The guests arrive and are unhappy about giving up their guns but do it for Oonas's sake. The men propose a "treasure hunt" which will enable them to drink.

Whitey and Paddy confront each other - Paddy was unhappy about Whitey dating Wilma. Paddy defends Wilma, saying she waited for him for two years. It turns out Wilma and Whitey were secretly married shortly before the party.

Oola finds Thelma in the arms of conman Horrie. This results in a fight where Horrie is stabbed and Charlie is shot. Both Horrie and Charlie die.

Thelma returns to the convent. It is ambiguous as to what her future relationship with her mother will be. 

Cast

• Neva Carr Glyn as Oola Maguire
• Annette Andre as Thelma Maguire
• Walter Sullivan as Horrie Darcel
• Alma Butterfield as Essie Farrell
• Frank Waters as Uncle Paddy Maguire
• Wendy Playfair as Wilma Cartwright
• Rodney Milgate as Whitey Maguire
• Gordon Glenwright as Charlie Gibson
• Mary Mackay as Sister Mary Luke
• Moya O'Sullivan as Sister Mary Mark
• Nat Levison as Barney Doyle
• Kenneth Goodlet
• Les Berryman
• Ron Dunphy
• John Fegan
• Christopher Douglas

Writing of original play

It won a National Playwrights Competition in 1958. The judges of the competition were Hugh Hunt and Kylie Tennant.^[

Judge Kylie Tennant called it "a witty commentary on human behaviour, passion, pride and vanity and the curious innocence which keeps people lovable for all their cunning and downright wickedness. It has humour, tolerance and the ability to bring people on the stage alive."

Kenna wrote the play while rehearsing in The Bells Are Ringing at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne. "Sometimes its easier to write when you have to squeeze time in for writing", he said.

Kenna said the play was "about outlaws. Not outlaws in the sense that they are rejected by society, but outlaws in the sense that they break some of the rules."

The original 1959 stage production was directed by Robin Lovejoy. It was the fourth "straight" Australian play from the Elizabethan Theatre Trust. Here is the original program.

Kenna wrote the part of Oona for Neva Carr Glynn.

"It's one of the most difficult parts I've had", she said. "But it's a magnificent one."

Kenna revised the play for publication by Currency Press in 1972. According to one account "Some scenes have been re-written so that what was formerly spelt out in dialogue is now left to visual symbolism and the audience's imagination; an entire scene in which the statue of St Teresa was smashed has been removed. Not only did this parallel too closely the smashing of the dolls in 'The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll' but its purpose was only to underline a point already well established."

My thoughts on the play

This play was filmed by the ABC in Sydney in 1960. I read the 1972 published edition, which I gather had some slight changes from the original 1959 production.

I was keen to see/read it because of the fantastic central situation: Oona Maguire, a Tilly Devine type character (she makes most of her money at the time of the play from SP bookmaking) lives in Paddington, Sydney; every St Teresa's Day she holds a party to honour the time he survived an assassination attempt. Various characters visit - ex-prostitutes, ex-goalbirds - but guns have to be left at the door and there's no drinking. This year her teenage daughter Thelma is visiting; she attends a convent boarding school, and wants to become a nun. Other party guests include Oona's cousin, who is just out of prison and is estranged from his father for dating a prostitute, and Horrie, also just out of prison, who sets out to seduce Oona and Thelma.

Now, that's one of the best set ups for an Australian play I've ever heard. A brilliant core character, a fascinating world, a rogue's gallery of colourful support, things you know are going to be paid off ("guns left at the door", "no drinking"), a very solid dramatic situation (dodgy man tries to seduce mother and daughter).

Kenna writes with a wonderful compassion, humour and empathy. He seems to like, and understand, all his characters: even Horrie, who is clearly a cad, is shown to have PTSD from prison and has a lovely moment where he gives Thelma a tip on how to use her imagination. He has a genuine sympathy for the outsider, being one himself (he was gay, at a time when that was not easy, to say the least).

There are some fantastic moments - the chat between the estranged father and son, Oona talking to the nuns, Horrie seducing Oona, Essie (Oona's helper) talking about her abusive husband.

I feel Kenna doesn't always do justice to his characters and ideas in terms of story. There's not enough Thelma-Oona-Horrie and too much Uncle Paddy; the latter tells a story which goes for three pages. It's a fun story, don't get me wrong, but it's a performance piece when there's all this other drama going on.

This was an issue I had with the other Peter Kenna play I've read (so far): Mates. That told the story of a man from the country visiting his old haunts in the city, a former brothel; it was inhabited by a drag queen who was seeing a male footballer. Again, incredibly strong characters and dialogue, a feeling for milieu and "outsiders" - but the conflict was dealt with too speedily, not drawn out enough.

 Says I, anyway! I don't meant to be disrespectful to Mr Kenna - I think he is a great writer whose work ages extremely well. I just think he's one of those writers whose talent would have been sharpened if he'd had to crank out story on  the radio/TV soaps for a bit, like say Sumner Locke Elliot or Peter Yeldham.

 Still, I'm not surprised this was revived a few times because the characters are so strong - it would be tremendous fun to act in this.

Other adaptations - Radio

In Feb 1959 there were reports it would play on radio on the General Motors Hour.

Kenna adapted the play for radio in a version which broadcast in 1960 and 1961.

The play also aired on British radio in 1963.

Other adaptations - 1962 British TV Version

The play was filmed by the BBC in 1962, when Kenna was living in England. The cast included Susannah York (Thelma), Vincent Ball (Horrie) and Madge Ryan (Oola).

The Sunday Times reviewing a later Kenna play Goodbye Gloria Goodbye said it was "not wholly successful, but like Kenna's earlier The Slaughter of St Teresa's Day... of a distinctive flavour" 

Date of transmission Friday 6 April 1962 Time 10.00-11.15pm Radio Times Issue 2003 29 March 1962 Page 49

Producer John Jacobs Designer Barry Learoyd 

Cast
Vincent Ball    Horrie Darcel
Johnny Briggs    Whitey Maguire
J. G. Devlin    Paddy Maguire
Maggie Fitzgibbon    Wilma
Ethel Gabriel    Essie Farrell
Reg Lye    Barney
Madge Ryan    Oola Maguire
John Tate    Charlie
Molly Urquhart    Sister Mary Luke
Margaret Wedlake    Sister Mary Mark
Susannah York    Thelma Maguire 

Interview with Madge Ryan on it

Peter Kenna, The Slaughter of St Teresa’s Day.

I knew him very well.

Oh did you. What can you tell me about him? Did you appear in any of his plays or did you?

Yes, we did Slaughter of St Teresa’s Day here as a television.

Oh did you. That’s interesting.

Susannah York as my daughter.

What was he like as a playwright in terms of the actors participation in his plays? Did he want to have anything to do with the.

Well that is the only one that I had anything to do with. And he didn’t. He didn’t have anything to do with it. He obviously must have had discussions with the director early in the piece. But he.

Was he on the set?

I can’t remember.

And how was that play received here?

We nearly had a, we had a near disaster with it. We recorded the play and I went on to do another, something else. I can’t remember what. Rehearsing a stage play I think. And when they ran it wasn’t the process they have now. When they ran it, half of it one of the cameras must been out of alignment or something, half of it was like an underwater effect. And they destroyed the set, or rather taking it apart or something. And John Jacobs, who directed, absolutely was turned to finish that play and get it done. I was the only one of the cast who was working. So they had to get me out of a couple of days rehearsal and we re-recorded the bits that had the underwater effective.

How did you get on with Susannah York?

Oh, very well. I’d work with her I think before in another Australian play or television, I can’t remember what it was.

 TV Production

 The play was one of ten Australian works produced by the ABC in 1960.

Director Alan Burke had worked at the Elizabethan Theatre Trust, who presented the original production of the play. 

Many of the cast from the stage show reprised their performance for TV.

It was designed by Philip Hickie, who also designed the original stage production. 

Burke in a 2006 NIDA interview said Neva was "a big actress, acted big". Burke had seen her on stage in Slaughter of St Teresa's Day and wanted to use her again. "We got along very well". Used her in A Night Out and Cousin from Fiji. She had "ability to play big but not false.. 'I am playing someone who is big'... Dominating or strong women she was marvellous with that." Burke "wouldn't have cast her as a shy maid". 

Burke told Graham Shilrey in a 2004 interview:

Now that would be the first Australian play I did for television. We had a little course, I don’t know what you would call it, a seminar, in which some theatre writers were brought in, in the company of the Directors of the ABC and we were each to be allocated as it were, a writer and their stunt was to try to get some Australian material. I was given Peter Kenna for instance. The idea was that we would work together and write, not together in that sense but get from them a script that would become an Australian television play. Peter and I talked and before we really went very far, we agreed that I should do an already existing Slaughter on St Theresa’s Day which he agreed to and so that’s what I did. He did later write some television but he was basically a theatre man and especially at that stage of his career but I managed to open it up a bit. An odd telephone conversation in which you went to the other end of the phone and a couple of street scenes with people walking up and down and we shot a bit on Central Station of the arrival of our schoolgirl daughter of the heroine and it looked quite authoritative, it didn’t look like a stage play I hope. I don’t think it did. Lovely play and I enjoyed that immensely.
It was the first time I’d worked with Neva Carr Glynn. She’d played it on stage and there was no was you could improve the casting. So that was that and we worked together many times afterwards.
GS The sequence on Central Railway was shot on film or video?
AB On film yes. In those days you used film for exteriors. I preferred to use video which we did a little later because of the quality matching. .
 

Annette Andre said about the production:

I remember that quite well – it was with Neva Carr Glynn. I became friendly with her son Nick Tate [an actor, later famous for Space 1999 among other shows] but that was in England. I had worked with Neva on radio and television. She was a wonderful actress – I was always terrified of her, she was a really tough lady, but very professional and experienced. I have to say I learned a lot from her. I was actually quite shy. And in order to cover my shyness I became a bit stand offish, a bit cold. Not overly-friendly I suppose. But I was scared stiff. Neva never really talked to me a lot until we did Slaughter of St Teresa’s Day and she said “my God I was terrified of you.” I said “What? I’m terrified of you.” We both laughed and became quite friendly after that.

That was a good play. It gave me an opportunity to play a significant role in a modern drama with a good cast and a very good script, and addressing a real life situation. I guess it was the beginning of the “kitchen sink” dramas.

Another member of the cast was Walter Sullivan. I believe I worked with him when I was 8 years old and I was cast in a professional theatre production of Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Theatre Royal in Sydney and I played the fairy, Cobweb. I think Walter Sullivan was in that production and I “fell in love“ with him. Love at 8 !!! However, in later years in Slaughter of St. Theresa’s Day, he tries to seduce me!!

In Sydney, there was a group of actors that I was lucky enough to be part of – we were offered some of the better roles.  Gordon Glenwright, John Tate, John Meillon and Charles Tingwell, Madge Ryan, Dorothy Allison, Lewis Fiander, Kevin Brennan and Barry Creyton. We all ended up in England at some point. It’s strange remembering all these actors, and all were really well-known in Australia at the time.

 Walter Sullivan took over the role played by Grant Taylor on stage.

Les Weldon did the technical supervision. 

Reception

The Australian Woman's Weekly called it " one of the best bits of live TV I have seen... Alma Butterfield as Aunt Essie stole the acting honors. She was splendid, such a real character — everyone's elderly aunt, the one that lives with the family and smoothes things out for them. Neva Carr-Glyn as Oola was good, but not in Aunt Essie's class. There should be more TV like this. It was excellent entertainment."

Max Harris of The Bulletin wrote this was when "Australian television drama came of age ."

The critic for the Sydney Morning Herald thought the play "lost little of its waywardness and some of its liveliness in a television production" and had faults with the play ("Kenna seems unable to settle decisively on one theme and to develop it boldly enough to carry his admirable intentions and considerable ability") but felt it was a "very worthwhile production, organised with some tact and imagination by Alan Burke."

The critic for the Sunday Sydney Morning Herald said "there are few TV dramas I have enjoyed more... It could have been written with television specifically in mind." 

TV Times thought it was the best locally written TV play to datd.

The critic for The Age called it "a gem of a TV script... a triumph for the ladies... a landmark in Australian TV drama."

AV Miley of the ABC said the show and Shadow of Heroes were "outstanding". 

TV Week called it a "lively and satisfactory platy".

In December 1960, reviewing the year in television, the Age thought it was "one of the most entertaining and best produced of its ilk."

In 1967, Agnes Harrison reviewed the first decade of Australian television and wrote Day was "Australian drama at its very best".

Reviewing the play years later Filmink stated the play was "creaky. It very much comes across like televised theatre; Alan Burke was skilled at blocking and handling his cast, but had some way to go before mastering the art of the close up. The actors sometimes play to the gallery." However the critic then added:

It completely captures a time and a place in Australia’s history. Oola Maguire’s blustering, laughing, sentimental bookie, cackling away with Essie, brilliantly brings to life a segment of society in my grandparents’ generation, with their garish side tables, pictures of saints, transistor radios and men with moustaches; it’s the time of SP bookies, and sing-a-longs around the piano, of prostitutes, sly grog, and schools run by nuns. It’s there in hundreds of little details: the way Walter Sullivan’s Horrie cleans his fingernails with a dagger, or how Essie answers the phone, or Oola’s reading glasses, or Wilma’s anxious dancing, or how the men hold their cigarettes and drink beer and swagger and say “right oh”. It’s an Australia that has vanished now, but which Kenna and company bring to life for 75 minutes... It’s not a masterpiece but it is important, and should be better known.

 

AWW 13 April 1960 p 66

Review of play SMH 12 March 1959 p 5

The Age Supplement 23 June 1960 p 5

The Age Supplement 23 June 1960 p 2

 

The Age 6 April 1967 p 29

The Age Supplement 29 Dec 1960 p 5

SMH 24 March 1960 p 5

SMH 27 March 1960 p 87

The Age 23 June 1960 p 35

SMH 29 March 1960 p 15

SMH 23 March 1960 p 26

SMH 21 March 1959 p 26

SMH 13 March 1960 p 116

The Age 29 June 1960 p 7

The Age Supplement 7 July 1960 p 3

The Age Supplement 7 July 1960 p 3

SMH TV Guide 21 March 1960 p 1

SMH 21 March 1960 p 25

 

The Age 19 Feb 1959

 

 

 I wrote a piece on the 1960 TV play for filmink. It's at https://www.filmink.com.au/forgotten-australian-tv-plays-the-slaughter-of-st-teresas-day/ but I've republished it below:

Forgotten Australian TV Plays – The Slaughter of St Teresa’s Day
 

by Stephen Vagg
October 19, 2020

Stephen Vagg shines a light on Australian TV plays worth remembering, starting with The Slaughter of St Teresa’s Day which aired on the ABC in 1960.

Most Australians would be unaware that we produced live TV drama in this country. And, truth be told, we didn’t make that much, certainly not compared to the British or Americans or Germans, but we still turned out a fair amount.

The Slaughter of St Teresa’s Day was based on a stage play by Peter Kenna (1930-1987), below, a quasi-legendary figure in Australian theatre, never quite fashionable, but never quite forgotten either. Kenna was the eleventh of thirteen children from an Irish-Australian family in Balmain; he began his showbusiness career as an actor and prop-maker, and wrote eleven unproduced plays (eleven!) before penning the stage version of Slaughter while appearing in a Melbourne production of The Bells Are Ringing.

The Slaughter of St Teresa’s Day has a terrific set-up, one of the best I’ve ever read in Australian theatre. It takes place around a party held by Ursula “Oola” Maguire, a middle-aged “colourful local identity”, based on the real-life underworld figure, Tilly Devine. Oola lives in Sydney’s inner-city with her lover Charlie and friend Essie, and holds an annual party on St Teresa’s Day to celebrate surviving being shot in the back eight years previously by “a gentleman I had a disagreement with” (she attributes her deliverance to praying to St Teresa). Her guests consist of various male bookies, gangsters, and pimps (women tend not to be invited, apart from Essie); there’s no alcohol and Oola insists everyone leave their guns at the door. This year the party is complicated by several new arrivals: Oola’s nephew, Whitey, fresh out of Long Bay Prison; his estranged father, Paddy; Wilma, a former prostitute whose relationship with Whitey caused said estrangement; Horrie, an acquaintance of Charlie’s who is also just out of prison; and Thelma, Oola’s sixteen-year-old daughter, visiting from her convent boarding school.

Tension rises during the party as the guests find a way to get drunk and Thelma announces her intention to become a nun. Paddy overcomes his dislike of Wilma’s past and re-connects with his son, but Horrie tries to seduce both Oola and Thelma, resulting in a confrontation that leads to gunfire and death. The following day, Thelma returns to school, her relationship with Oola (and future) left on an ambiguous note.

The Slaughter of St Teresa’s Day won the 1958 National Playwrights Competition; one of the judges was author Kylie Tennant, who called the play “a witty commentary on human behaviour, passion, pride and vanity and the curious innocence which keeps people lovable for all their cunning and downright wickedness. It has humour, tolerance and the ability to bring people on the stage alive.”

Tennant was spot on: Slaughter has a brilliant core character, a fascinating world, a rogue’s gallery of colourful support players, clever dramatic set-ups that you know are going to be paid off in exciting ways (“guns left at the door”, “no drinking”), and a very solid dramatic situation (a gangster tries to seduce a criminal mother and convent-educated daughter). Kenna writes with a wonderful compassion, humour and empathy for these outsiders; he seems to like, and understand, all his characters, be they prostitutes, murderers or nuns: even Horrie, who is a violent sex pest, shown to have PTSD from prison and has a lovely moment where he gives Thelma a tip on how to use her imagination to get through bad times.

The play was first presented by the Elizabethan Theatre Trust in Sydney in 1959. It received, from all accounts, a quality debut production: the cast included some of the leading actors of the day, such as Neva Carr Glynn (as Oola), below, Dinah Shearing (Wilma) and Grant Taylor (Horrie). Reviews were a little snippy but generally supportive. It wasn’t a blockbuster like the Trust’s earlier Summer of the Seventeenth Doll but it was a qualified success; the play has been revived a number of times over the years, and was published in book form in 1972.

It was naturalistic, road-tested, critically approved, offered showy roles and all took place in one location. As such it was ideal for television adaptation.

The ABC had been producing television plays since 1956, but overwhelmingly the output consisted of performances of overseas scripts. For instance, the first locally-shot small-screen drama broadcast in this country was The Twelve Pound Look, from a British play by J.M. Barrie (of Peter Pan fame).

There were some Australian plays, and Australian adaptations of overseas stories, but these were in the minority. The common excuse for this at the time was “there were no good Australian writers” which simply wasn’t true – there were scores of them, some of international standing (Peter Yeldham, Sumner Locke Elliott, Rex Rienits, Ruth Park, Alan Seymour) and there were plenty of novels, short stories, plays and historical events to adapt, as the 1970s would demonstrate. The real reason was the contempt felt for Australian writers and stories by people who decided what went to air. Hatred of Australian writing ran through local culture in the 1950s and 1960s like a Trojan virus; that statement may seem extreme, but trudge through a decade of newspaper reviews of these plays and then tell me what you think – the relentless bagging of local writing was something to behold.

It took a genuine act of will to produce local stories for television and sometimes people were punished for doing so: for instance, the broadcast of The Multi Coloured Umbrella (1958), based a play by local author Barbara Vernon, prompted a storm of letters demanding how dare the ABC depict Australians like this. Peter Yeldham’s superb script about Anzac Day, Reunion Day (1962), was shown to great acclaim on the BBC but was considered so offensive in its depiction of veterans, that it was effectively banned in Australia by the local censor. It was not easy to stand up for Australian writing: it was simpler to pick scripts from overseas, especially ones with a BBC stamp of approval, and blame poor ratings and lack of impact on the cultural philistinism of Australian audiences.

Still, like I said, some local stories snuck through the wire – in particular, in 1960 the ABC seemed to go on something of an Australiana drive. That year, not only would Aunty produce a ground-breaking mini-series about the Rum Rebellion, Stormy Petrel, they would make ten television plays from new Australian writers, including The Slaughter of St Teresa’s Day.

The director of Slaughter was Alan Burke, one of the leading TV directors based in Sydney at the time (admittedly there were only around three TV directors in Sydney at the time). Some of the cast had been in the initial stage production, notably Neva Carr Glynn (Oona), Frank Waters (Paddy) and Rodney Milgate (Whitey); there were some newcomers, notably Annette Andre (Thelma) and Walter Sullivan (Horrie). The adaptation was a faithful one, although several trims were made (the running time was 75 minutes).

Like most local TV plays from the era, Slaughter was broadcast “live” from its home studio – in this case, the ABC Studios at Gore Hill, Sydney. There was some location footage shot to top and tail the production; this consisted of Annette Andre as Thelma arriving at Central Railway Station before the party, then of her walking away from the house the next day. A kinescope record of the production was broadcast out of Melbourne in June.

I don’t know what the ratings were like: probably not too high, they never were for TV plays on the ABC (Stormy Petrel, on the other hand, was a blockbuster). Reviews, however, were very positive: The Bulletin said Slaughter of St Teresa’s Day was when Australian television drama came of age and The Age called it “a landmark in Australian TV drama”.

The landmark is little remembered today. It seems to have been rarely repeated. I was able to source a copy via the National Film and Sound Archive.

I won’t lie – the production is creaky. It very much comes across like televised theatre; Alan Burke was skilled at blocking and handling his cast, but had some way to go before mastering the art of the close up. The actors sometimes play to the gallery. There are several long monologues which don’t really work on screen, but you can imagine would have been effective on stage, such as Horrie discussing how he got his name, and Paddy and Wilma dancing. (There were even more monologues in the original play – as a writer, Kenna tended to be more interested in character than narrative drive).

But it is always interesting. The characterisations are strong, the basic dramatic situation sound, the language and detail are a delight. If Kenna doesn’t exploit his central idea to its full potential, he does at least include action (there’s kissing, a knife fight, gunshots). In hindsight, it’s a shame no one tried to adapt the play as a TV series: it had a fascinating world and characters that would generate compelling storylines over a long period.

Neva Carr Glynn and Annette Andre are excellent as Oola and Thelma: two very different people, almost strangers, trying to still love each other. Oola’s gangster friends (played by Kenneth Goodlet and John Fegan, among others), are fantastic – so much so that one wishes they had more screen time. Alma Butterfield’s performance as Essie is sublime: she brilliantly encapsulates an entire generation of Australian womanhood, with her hunched shoulders, faded dress, mangled vocabulary and verbal sniping. Walter Sullivan is prone to overact as Horrie but has some wonderful moments; I would have loved to see Grant Taylor, the charismatic film star of Forty Thousand Horsemen repeat his stage performance as Horrie, but Sullivan brings a lounge-lizard dimension to the character that is effective. The young lovers – Wendy Playfair (Wilma) and Rodney Milgate (Whitey) – are strong, as is Gordon Glenwright as Charlie. The only really distracting performance is that of Frank Waters (Uncle Paddy), who is clearly a skilled actor but is caked in white make-up to appear twenty-five years older; this may have worked on stage but under the harsh lights of TV is extremely distracting.

The success of Slaughter of St Teresa’s Day did not lead to an explosion in Australian TV plays over the ensuing few years. There was a slight increase, including several sequels to Stormy Petrel, but the bulk of locally made television came from foreign pens. For instance, in 1964 the ABC broadcast twenty TV plays, of which a grand total of three were from Australian writers. It wasn’t until the second half of the 1960s, with the success of shows such as Homicide and Bellbird, not to mention increased quotas for local shows, that executives came to realise the drawing power of Australian stories.

Kenna went on to have an eclectic career. Like most Australian writers of his generation, he lived for a time in the UK, where Slaughter of St Teresa’s Day was filmed by the BBC in 1962 (the cast included Susannah York alongside such Australian expats as Madge Ryan, Reg Lye and Vincent Ball, which is pretty cool). He returned home, had severe health issues, and wrote a number of plays, one of which, A Hard God, became a classic of 1970s Australian theatre. His friendship with the legendary prisoner-playwright Jim McNeil inspired the Nick Enright play Mongrels.

Alan Burke stayed at the ABC for most of his career. Like many of his colleagues who directed early Australian TV, he never made the transition to features, but he had a long, distinguished list of credits, including a number of other adaptations of local plays.

Does the 1960 TV production of The Slaughter of St Teresa’s Day matter? Absolutely. Creaky museum piece it may be, but it completely captures a time and a place in Australia’s history. Oola Maguire’s blustering, laughing, sentimental bookie, cackling away with Essie, brilliantly brings to life a segment of society in my grandparents’ generation, with their garish side tables, pictures of saints, transistor radios and men with moustaches; it’s the time of SP bookies, and sing-a-longs around the piano, of prostitutes, sly grog, and schools run by nuns. It’s there in hundreds of little details: the way Walter Sullivan’s Horrie cleans his fingernails with a dagger, or how Essie answers the phone, or Oola’s reading glasses, or Wilma’s anxious dancing, or how the men hold their cigarettes and drink beer and swagger and say “right oh”.  It’s an Australia that has vanished now, but which Kenna and company bring to life for 75 minutes of flickering kinescope that you can see at the National Film and Sound Archive.

It’s not a masterpiece but it is important, and should be better known.

Kenna on the play - interview here

1960 - wrote another three plays after Teressa - some interest but difficult to get
Stage play “wasn’t very well received, the notices were carping...
This was partly due to the fact it was rehearsed in four weeks.” He didn’t go to rehearsals and didn’t get to rewrite. After he saw opening he wanted to cut sections but the actors were busy rehearsing Man and Superman (the next play) He didn’t get a chance to rework it. He had a chance to rewrite it as an ABC television play “and this was the most enormous success”. (8.20)
Also did a successful radio version. The BBC bought the script for television. So he went off to London to get writing and acting work. Went to London found it difficult to get work as an actor. Dried up as an actor.  Feeling wrung out due to the stage play.

“It’s terrible to be exposed to that sort of criticism. At that time everybody expected every Australian play to be a great Australian play, it wasn’t enough just to write a  moderate sort of play or a little fluffy comedy, every play had to be a great Australian play and there were so many critics everywhere. There were about three or four Australian writers at that time and there were hundreds of critics waiting to pounce on everything that they wrote. Some to say good things, some to say bad things but they sprung up like grass everywhere so that almost every single write had about fifty critics hanging off him at that stage. It was such a difficult period for writers. I know writers during that period who just gave up writing completely, they were broken. Because they’d have something done and it would be criticised out of all reason. And then of course they just stopped writing altogether and it was so difficult to get people to read plays.”

“One needed an enormous amount of stamina and hardness to go on writing when there were so many disappointments in it... There are disappointments for everyone in this business but for writers it was extremely difficult.”

Slaughter presented by the BBC “and it was quite a success there... it had a marvellous cast... But I did think the Sydney production was superior because of course it was presented in the Australian setting with all those those people and The English director didn’t quite understand the issues as well as an Australian director did.”