Australian TV Plays: Venus Observed (2 Nov 1960)

More Christopher Fry. 75 mins.

Premise

A Duke decides to remarry for a third time. He gets his son Edgar to pick the bride from the Duke's three former mistresses, Rosabel, Jessie and Hilda. The son has to do it before the eclipse of the sun "when all women will be as one".

The three ex mistresses arrive and are shown to a former bedroom, now an observatory, where the Duke will watch the eclipse. During the eclipse, Edgar awards the apple, which indicates his choice of step mothers, to Rosabel.

But just as the eclipse ends, another girl arrives, Perpetua. The Duke likes Perpetua but Edgar wants her for herself.

Cast

Walter Sullivan as Duke of Altair
Rachel Lloyd as Perpetua
David Bluford as Edgar
Jacqueline Kott as Rosabel Fleming
Gwen Plumb as Jessie Dill
Ria Sohier as Hilda Taylor-Snell
Hugh Stewart as Reedback
John Dennis as Dominic
John Gray as Reddleman
James Elliott as Bates

Original Play

The original play premiered in London in 1950. The production was from Laurence Olivier, who starred alongside Denholm Elliott. Olivier had commissioned the play from Chris Fry. The play was based on the Greek legend of the Judgment of Paris in which the young man handed the woman of his choice an apple as a symbol of her perfection.

You can borrow a copy of the play here.

The Laurence Olivier tick of approval carried a lot of weight at the ABC - they did adaptations of Daphne Laurolea, Captain Carvallo.

The play had a brief run on Broadway in 1952 with Rex Harrison.

Other adaptations

The play was adapted on British TV by ITV in 1957.

It was done by BBC radio in 1950. And ABC radio in 1951 directed by Paul O'Loughlin.

It was filmed for Canadian TV in 1963. The BBC did it for TV in 1973.

Production

It was directed by Alan Burke who had directed a stage production at the Arrow Theatre in Melbourne in 1952. (This was run by Frank Thring). Burke later told Graham Shirley thw production "did wonderfully, packed out and I got good press. And John Sumner mentions it in his autobiography as when he arrived there wasn’t any theatre to go to, although he heard very good reports of A Venus Observed directed by Alan Burke, so I think I’m his first name in his autobiography. Then Frank, who was not always gracious said to me afterwards ‘thank you for Venus Observed’ and I thought that’s the greatest compliment I’ve ever had from Frank. "

It was the Australian television debut of English actor Rachel Lloyd, although she had been in two episodes of Whiplash.

The sets were by Geoffrey Wedlock. Director Alan Burke used a number of trick effects particularly at the end when the house is destroyed by fire than rained on.

Alan Seymour did the adaptation. Burke said it was "a very television treatment".

Burke later told Graham Shirley in 2004:

Not very happy about Venus Observed. I had done this in Melbourne on stage at Frank Thring’s Arrow Theatre and I had done it I think very well. It packed out, it did wonderful business and everybody liked it and I liked it. And come the television thing and we were looking for something for the slot and Paul O’Loughlin (said ‘well, why don’t you do your old friend Venus Observed that you did in Melbourne’. I’m a bit reluctant to do things a second time and I have already done Skin of Our Teeth on stage and then on tele and I thought ‘oh well alright’. So we gave it a stab. I cast an absolutely unknown girl whom I’d met, very beautiful, ravishingly good looking girl and I think she’d come in for an interview one day or something and I cast her as Perpetua. I cast an actor I had never worked with, Alan, oh dear the name’s going to escape me... We had the read through round the table and then I got a call from his Agent saying he wouldn’t be able to do it. I didn’t question it and said ‘alright’ and cast somebody else, Walter Sullivan I think. And months later I was at a party of some actors and there was Alan whatever his name is, and he came over and was a bit rude and pointed to his chin and said ‘hit me there go on, just hit me there’. I said ‘I’m not remotely interested in hitting you, what are you talking about’ and anyway, he’d had a couple of drinks. And he said ‘well next time you cast me, give me a leading lady who can act’ or something equally rude. And that was the end of that. Anyway Venus Observed went alright. It didn’t cut happily. I think Alan Seymour might have done the cut... Oh well it was alright, I just didn’t draw great joy from it and it didn’t make any ripples.

David Twilby later recalled:

In a rare premonition, minutes before we went to air ‘live’ with the drama "Venus Observed", I wondered what would happen if the gun did not fire. I looked around the studio, saw a broom in the corner, gave it to a studio hand and told him when the time came for the gun to go off to hold the handle of the broom about a foot off the ground with his foot halfway down the handle and if the gun did not go off, to let go of the handle and push down as hard as he could with his foot. The gun did not go off, the broom made a loud bang and the heroine died. Sad to say when I heard the replay, the off mike sound of a broom hitting the floor sounded more a clatter than a gun.

According to ABC records below the ABC was going to show "The Foreign Born" by Austraalian writer A. B Fatseas. Not sure what happened. That play is mentioned here.

Reception

The critic for The Sydney Morning Herald called Venus Observed a "a pleasantly competent piece of work... a production rich in setting, with exactly the right kind of faded spaciousness you would expect in such a household.... It will be good to see more productions of this calibre.

LITV thought it had too much "good talk".