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The
End Of The Festival
The abrupt demise
of Festival had left Peter Luke with a selection of orphaned
plays which never made it to the screen under this programme title,
and as such they formed the basis of the first official season of The
Wednesday Play, a collection of eight plays, with an average running-time
of seventy-five minutes, six of which were produced in the United
Kingdom and accompanied by two Canadian imports. Hailed as
"a stimulating season of international drama" by the Radio
Times, the series premiered on October 28th 1964, with Nikolai
Leskov's A Crack In The Ice, and despite Luke's laudible
ambition to provide entertainment catering to a specific audience (he
went to great pains to underline the fact that the material presented
in the new series had keenly considered the interests of its viewership),
the first eight plays were somewhat pedestrian in terms of their visual
realisation, based largely on adaptations of old plays and novels without
a contextual bearing on contemporary life.
Two scenes from The July Plot |
The
performances from the likes of such notable actors as Patrick
Wymark, Bill Fraser, Harold Pinter (in a rare television appearance),
Nigel Stock and Michael Goodliffe could not be faulted,
but for the most part the supporting performances were run-of-the-mill
and the plays mustered nothing more than the customarily supportive
murmurs from the media and critics. However, one particular episode
exposed a lifeline for The Wednesday Play, presenting audiences
with the briefest hint of what would come with further refinement
and retuning of the programme barely twelve months after its premiere.
Introduced by Tom Driberg MP and adapted by Roger Manvell
from his book (co-written by Heinrich Fraenkel), The July
Plot remains an outstanding reflection of the capabilities of
the televisual medium, thanks chiefly to the expert handling of
director Rudolph Cartier. Set in July 1944 and chronicling
a failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler, the play proved
an ideal forum for Cartier, something of an expert when it
came to realising World War Two material for British
television.
A
strong, gripping affair with an air of pseudo-documentary in terms
of its visual style, the play illicited potent performances from
John Carson, Charles Lloyd Pack, Peter Copley, Cyril Luckham
and John Abineri, and proved to be the most memorable entry
in the first two months of the programme's history. |
Notable directorial contributions from Ronald Eyre, Philip Saville,
Gilchrist Calder and Christopher Morahan reflected the desire
of the production to attract the most reputable handlers of the material,
yet in these formative stages the only glimmer of hope for future entries
lay in the stylistic treatment of Manvell's play. Lukewarm audience
and critical appreciation of the first series of The Wednesday Play
failed to establish the format as a firm fixture in BBC Television's
future schedules, and it took all the powers of persuasion at Sydney
Newman's disposal to ensure that the programme was given a more appropriate
running-in period, a second extended season of twenty-five proposed plays.
However, Newman's disappointment at the realisation of his labours
under the production stewardship of Peter Luke resulted in the
services of his long-term partner from Armchair Theatre no longer
being required (although Newman would reverse this decision in
January 1966, having distanced himself from his colleague so as
to restructure the series). In a bid to put The Wednesday Play
on a more assured footing, commanding audience attention, critical praise
and lucrative international sales, Newman would call upon the experimental
expertise of a director north of the border.
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