Australian TV Plays: Tomorrow's Child (9 April 1957)

The first sci fi drama made for Australian TV and the first Australian drama to go for an hour. "Sci fi" is probably too generous a description - it was more a comedy set in the future.

It aired in Sydney on 9 April 1957 and a recording was broadcast in Melbourne on 26 April.

Premise

A satirical comedy of the future. In the year 1965 various people live in an apartment complex. Elizabeth is a co-operative person engaged to Peter. Allan Winter is an individualistic artist.

According to one description, this is a satirical comedy set twenty years ahead in a future where everything is standardized: furniture, clothing, entertainment, even people. To underline the point, one of the characters is called Utility, who sounds as if she might be a forgotten Mitford sister; but the name actually alludes to the cheap and functional no-frills ‘utility’ goods manufactured by government order during the austerity of the war and its aftermath. The state controls its citizens’ every action, even their every thought. There are uniformed ‘Community Wardens’ to watch the neighborhood and enforce the rules, their black shirts another topical reference to the distinctive appearance of British fascists in the years before the war. And technology also plays its part: every home is fitted with a loudspeaker, through which instructions are issued, and these devices cannot be turned off.

The story deals with the misfortunes of various individualists and eccentrics, including Allan Winter, a painter and an incorrigible romantic who is duly unimpressed by the unimaginative utilitarianism to which English culture now has been reduced. His strand of the plot concerns his relationship with a pretty bureaucrat, Elizabeth Solway, and his efforts to educate her in amatory matters.

Cast

*James Condon

* Janette Craig

* Queenie Ashton

* Mayne Lynton

* Tom Farley

* Bernard Barber

* Lola Brooks

Original play

The play was by someone called John Coates and appears to have been put on in 1946. Coates later wrote the script for the John Gregson comedy True as a Turtle (1957).

Other productions

There's a reference to the play being produced in London in 1946 here. Some further information for the play is here. It was possibly an inspiration for the Orwell novel 1984.

The play was performed on stage in Mackay (in 1951), Adelaide and Melbourne (in 1953).

It was adapted for radio in Adelaide in 1951 and in Melbourne in 1951.

I don't think it was adapted for the BBC for radio or TV. (Can't say for sure). The ABC radio thing would have been enough.

Production

Alan Seymour wrote the script (adaptation). Ray Menmuir directed. It was shot in Sydney.

The NAA has photos of it. See here. Not online.

Thoughts

Why did they make this? Wasn't a particularly well known play. Someone at the ABC must have thought it was funny. I haven't read the script or the original play, it may have been hilarious.

It was the first ABC TV play to comment on a relatively recent social matter, i.e. socialisim in post war England.