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The
Wednesday Play Season Four
Season four was produced by Peter Luke except for Way Off Beat which was produced by James MacTaggart.
Publicity
: The Boneyard by Clive Exton begins
a new season of The Wednesday Play: Tonight's play is no haphazard choice.
In the first place, it is written by Clive Exton, which, to many, is
recommendation enough. Secondly, it represents a friendly take-over
from the outgoing Wednesday Play producer, James MacTaggart, by the
incoming producer, myself, since the former directed it and the latter
produced it. Finally, it is indicative of the tendency of the 1966 season
towards irony and humour.
Publicity
: Norman Rodway and Valerie Gearon
in tonight's play - A Man On Her Back: The club is called the New Mariven.
It was supposed to be "Malvern" but the signwriter got it
wrong and no one has ever bothered to make the correction. It is a softly
lit drinking place with a very mixed bag of members. Discreet tippling
music is supplied nightly by John at the piano, and local colour largely
by Raoul, who dresses like a diddicoy but is actually a couturier.
Publicity : Graham Crowden as Mayhew, Lucy Griffiths as his mother, and Danny Green as Smith in Rodney, Our Intrepid Hero - A new playwright, a new director, and an Irish actor new to British television combine their talents in tonight's play - introduced here by David Benedictus: "Everything that's worth doing these days is illegal. And virtually everything worth having is priceless or in a museum". Thus Mayhew, master-criminal in this weeks Wednesday Play, Rodney, Our Intrepid Hero, and which of us has not felt the same? But it takes a true master-criminal to set about solving this dilemma, and it takes someone of the calibre of Mayhew to come up with Anything Incorporated, an exclusive club devoted to provide the illegal and unattainable for its clients. Unfortunately for Mayhew he numbers among these clients Smith, head of a vice ring, and unfortunately for Smith, the Sunday Clarion, in the person of our intrepid hero, Rodney Peters, is hot on his tracks. Guillotines, sharks, lions - nothing deters Rodney, and only the adoration of Samantha, his beautiful and available girlfriend, discomforts him. Which of us has not felt the same? This week's play is the first to be directed by intrepid Michael Simpson, an experienced director in Schools Television, and it is the first television play by a new writer, Brian Finch, an intrepid journalist from Manchester. Finally, it is the first television appearance in this country of Jim Norton, an intrepid young Irish performer who won the award for best actor on Irish television recently. Mayhew is played by Graham Crowden, at present starring in the National Theatre's successful production of Trelawney Of The Wells. Smith is represented by Danny Green, who will be remembered from The Ladykillers, and Jacqueline Ellis plays Samantha. In short, this promises to be the first intrepid television play of 1966, Rodney, Our Intrepid Hero is especially intended for nervous people - and is guaranteed to make nervous people out of the rest of us. (Radio Times, January 13, 1966 - Article by David Benedictus). Cast : Graham Crowden (Mayhew), Danny Green (Smith), Jim Norton (Rodney Peters), Jacqueline Ellis (Samantha), Charles West (Sylvester), Margo Cunningham (Myra Croup), Bruno Barnabe (Inspector Potts), John Cazabon (McNabb), Kristopher Kum (Cuthbert), Cecil Cheng (Lionel), Roger Chan (Lionel), Apple Brook (Mrs Smith), Stan Simmons (Charles), Lionel Wheeler (The Police Constable), Derek Ware (The Gladiator), Alf Joint (Netman), Alan Selwyn (Sanderson), Michael Finlayson (Vickers) and Lucy Griffiths (Mrs Mayhew). Notes & Trivia : This episode had a running time of seventy-five minutes and was transmitted from 9:40pm to 10:55pm. This episode is one of twelve episodes from the fourth season of The Wednesday Play which no longer exist.
Publicity
: Isobel Black and Simon Ward in
tonight's play - Calf Love: At the drop of the perennial hat, savants
and sociologists seem happy to rush into as much print as editors will
pay them for in order to air their views on the patterns of sexual behaviour
among teenagers. What they say amounts to one thing: that "now"
teenagers are sex-conscious, whereas "then" they were not
- and there were no teenagers "then" anyway. This may account
for the absence in all their verbiage of the term "calf love".
Publicity
: Silent Song - Tonight's play is
set in an Irish Trappist Monastery and stars Milo O'Shea, Tony Selby
and Jack MacGowran: Six years ago Frank O'Connor inspired me to try
to make a play out of the vagaries beneath the seeming calm of life
in a Trappist Monastery. I put the idea up at a story conference and
it was received with derision. "Ha, ha, ha!" my colleagues
roared. "A play with no dialogue!" and they rolled off their
seats laughing.
Publicity
: Ronald Lacey and Thora Hird in
tonight's play - Who's A Good Boy Then? I Am: Billy Oates meets a lady
in the market and offers to carry her basket. Happens every day, you
might think. "You have very kind eyes," says Billy to Blanche.
"You have got a very nice nature," says Blanche to Billy.
"I try to lead a useful life," admits Billy, not without a
certain smug pride. Blanche brings him shortcake as a reward. Walter
Hoskins also tries to lead a useful life: although unemployed, he is
not idle.
Publicity
: Alethea Charlton as Elizabeth
and Susan Richards as Mrs Everton - A Game - Like - Only A Game - John
Hopkins is the author of this week's Wednesday Play: Tonight's play
is ostensibly about a nice old lady, her cat, and two little boys. But
since it is by that uncosy writer, John Hopkins, you may be sure that
it is not only about that. The two little boys, brothers in the play,
are played by two brothers, Arthur and Jack Wild.
Publicity
: Alan Dobie and Fionnuala Flanagan
who star in tonight's Wednesday Play - Why Aren't You Famous?: Eileen's
Irish mother said she was born to be famous in another land. Well, mothers
are often right. Toppet's mother knits him red socks and sends him thirty
bob a week to tide him over until his pictures sell.
Publicity : The Wednesday Play - Macready's Gala: The Great Train Robbers - some of them - are at present free with two million pounds to spend. Their confreres are in prison serving up to thirty years apiece. How different their respective states of mind. Some say that no man can spend more than ten years in close confinement and remain unaffected - without undergoing some sort of breakdown of personality. What possible connection between prison and Macready's Gala? Well, for one thing, Macready's is a boarding school. And the Gala? The Headmaster and the governing body are convened to discuss arrangements for the gala opening of the new Memorial Room, a bleak, windowless affair, to be dedicated to the memory of old boys killed in the two wars. And now a curious thing happens - which brings us back to the train robbers: somehow they all get locked in it and have to stay there all night. The train robbers had plenty of time during their trial to prepare themselves for what was to come. Not so the governors of Macready's: that vague old cleric, Canon Dunwoodie, for example, or Major Craxton-Christie, a dug-out from the 1914 war with his snobbish wife, or even young Smeed, that bolshie member of the local council with a chip on his shoulder about his working-class origins. Then there is mad Mike MacFarland, a local hearty, and dear old Miss Plimsoll with her leanings towards the occult. All pretty stock characters one might think; all very normal. But something happens to them during the course of their night's incarceration which cannot possibly be explained in terms of normalcy. This is probably Hugh Whitemore's best play to date and the second of Waris Hussein's productions for The Wednesday Play. (Radio Times, February 24, 1966 - Article by Peter Luke). Cast : Richard Pearson (The Headmaster), John Le Mesurier (Canon Dunwoodie), Barbara Couper (Mrs Craxton-Christie), Jane Eccles (Miss Plimsoll), Stanley Meadows (Lionel Smead), Priscilla Morgan (Beryl Smead), David Hutcheson (Marjor Craxton-Christie), Donald Eccles (Alfred Remnant) and Michael Bates (Mike MacFarland). Notes & Trivia : This episode had a running time of seventy minutes and was transmitted from 9:00pm to 10:10pm.
Publicity
: Marius Goring and Nora Nicholson
in A Walk In The Sea: James Hanley, with about thirty novels and a fistful
of stage and television plays behind him, is an Irishman by birth and
a self-confessed Welshman by adoption. Whether he likes it or not, it
is from this admixture of the two Celtic streams that his torrent of
sounds and silences pours out in all the convoluted inner rhythms of
Gaelic verse. Nor is his vision less unusual.
Publicity : Boy In The Smoke - Tonight's play stars Sean Caffrey as Paddy, an Irish immigrant abroad in London: Tonight's play is set in Paddington, which for so many newcomers arriving by train is the first part of London they see. For the Irish in particular, finding a haven among other Irishmen in the pubs and cheap hotels around the station, it is quite often the only part. Among the immigrants is Paddy, badly hung over and minus his wallet, who takes a very different view of the district from Billy Carey, with the excitement of huge building sites to play on and the mysteries of the canal. They make an unlikely partnership; but in the course of the play Mr Carey's search for his truant son and Paddy's hunt for the thief who stole his wallet become interwoven with a question of friendship and personal freedom. As Paddy, twenty-five-year-old Sean Caffrey, who has already made a name for himself in America, had his first part on BBC Television when this play was first seen on BBC-2 last year. Billy is played by Raymond Hunt, second of four brothers who live in Bow, and a young actor of great promise who spent his first year as a professional with the Royal Shakespeare company. Written with sharp insight by the Irish poet and dramatist Patrick Galvin - best known, perhaps, for his book of collected poems, Christ In London - the play follows the joint and separate adventures of Paddy and Billy through twenty-four hours. (Radio Times, March 10, 1966). Cast : Sean Caffrey (Paddy), Ray Mort (Jim), John Sharp (The Professor), Raymond Hunt (Billy), Tony Steedman (Mr Carey), Harry Walker (The Foreman), James Fitzgerald (Thomas), Christine Shaw (Mrs Carey), Valerie Bell (The Waitress), John Barrard (The Small Man), Wesley Murphy (The Barman), Judith Smith (Sylvia), Frank Jarvis (The Young Man), Paddy Joyce (Crazy), Allan Mitchell and Stanley Stewart (The Policemen). Notes & Trivia : This episode had a running time of seventy-five minutes and was transmitted from 9:25pm to 10:40pm. This episode was first transmitted on May 13th, 1965, as part of the Londoners series of plays first presented on BBC-2. This play was one of three extracts from this series to be re-screened as part of The Wednesday Play. This episode is one of twelve episodes from the fourth season of The Wednesday Play which no longer exist.
Publicity
: Jack Woolgar and Annabel Maule
in tonight's play - Barlow Of The Car Park: Barlowe … Barlowe of
the Car Park: a Cromagnon Quixote, a Pithecanthropoid Lorenzo the Magnificent;
proconsul of an acre of tarmacadam, Chef de Protocol of the parking
of motor vehicles licensed under the Greater London Council Road Traffic
Act of 1960 and, in especial, the arbiter elegantarium of hub-caps.
Publicity
: Diana Hoddinott and Anthony Newlands
in tonight's play - The Portsmouth Defence: He saw a lawyer killing
a viper on a dung hill hard by his own stable; And the Devil smiled,
for it put him in mind of Cain and his brother, Abel. So says the satirical
rogue, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Indeed, so many distinguished writers
from the dawn of literacy to the present day have castigated, denounced,
execrated, lampooned, and generally anathematised the Law and its practitioners
that one is beginning to feel that there can't be smoke without fire
- which is what tonight's play is about. Of course, this dissatisfaction
with the Law on the part of writers may be partly due to the fact that
they as a race have a tendency for getting on the wrong side of it.
Publicity
: Henry McGee and Derek Francis
in this week's Wednesday Play - Pity About The Abbey: We were trespassing
one day in the old Charterhouse at Clerkenwell, which is now a home
for retired business and professional men. We had been admiring the
private chapel and were returning through the living quarters when one
of the old gents sitting there murmured to another, "Who are those
four fine-looking men?". His companion replied, "Those are
three fine-looking men and Mr John Betjeman". Such is Betjeman's
egregious charm that he seems to go anywhere he pleases - and is welcome.
One of the other three was Stewart Farrar, chosen by Betjeman as his
collaborator, and thenceforth nicknamed "The Dean".
Publicity : The Big Man Coughed And Died - George Baker and Eileen Atkins are two of the stars of this week's Wednesday Play: Nobody wants to be a "nobody" all his life. Everybody aspires to be a "somebody" sometime before the Grim Reaper garners him in. Some succeed by an admixture of talent and hard work. Others, who lack the one or the capacity for the other, turn to self-delusion. Thus a fantasy life begins in which the fantasist becomes his own victim, ceasing to know any more what is true and what is false. Brian Wright, a young actor, has taken this as the theme for his first play which he has set, not in the milieu of articulate people, but in the workaday world of Louie Summers (George Baker), a married machine-minder who has recently been made redundant by his firm. Redundancy causes in him a sort of emotional aberration which takes a more specific form when he innocently meets a girl in the park (Eileen Atkins) who releases a latent potential in him, albeit a very small one. But people hate to see a change in their fellows and, seeing it, call it names like "Toffee-nose," and suchlike. As dogs will turn to savage an injured member of their own species, so will humans. Louie and the girl are persecuted by those with whom they come into daily contact - the most formidable of whom is a power-drunk park keeper (John Sharp). The author has treated this serious subject in terms of wry comedy which Peter Duguid has directed with a light touch. (Radio Times, April 7, 1966 - Article by Peter Luke). Cast : George Baker (Louie Summers), Eileen Atkins (The Girl), John Sharp (The Park Keeper), Diana Coupland (Mona Summers), Anthony Dutton (The First Man), Nicholas Smith (The Second Man), Richard Armour (The Third Man), Olive Lucius (The Woman Clerk), Harry Towb (Ernie), Larry Noble (The Old Man), Amelia Baynton (Mona Summers' Mother), Philip Anthony (The Doctor), Martin Friend (A Personnel Manager) and Isla Cameron (The Ballad Singer). Notes & Trivia : This episode had a running time of seventy-five minutes and was transmitted from 9:00pm to 10:15pm. Music for the episode was composed by Stanley Myers.
Publicity : Patrick Allen and Katharine Blake in tonight's Wednesday Play - The Snow Ball: There is a growing number of good professional writers today who regard television as their first medium. Little reason now therefore to fall back on the theatre or the novel for material to fill the screen. Nevertheless for tonight's Wednesday Play we have chosen a novel by Brigid Brophy. It is none of my business here to discuss the merits of The Snow Ball as a novel beyond saying that I like it. But I am bound to say that had Brigid Brophy been first a dramatist she must surely have written The Snow Ball as a television play since it first so perfectly into the medium. The Three Unities of time, place, and action all conspire to assist the dramatist - in this case, Ursula Gray - to bring the story within the scope of a television production and, as such, to make it, technically speaking, a very good play indeed. The action takes place during the course of a New Year's EDve ball - starting at the sophisticated hour of ten-thirty and ending at dawn the following morning. It is a fancy-dress ball and, since it is being given in an eighteenth-century house, the guests are required to be in costume of that period. It is a coincidence that two people, complete strangers to each other, come dressed as the protagonists in Mozart's opera, Don Giovanni. They do not remain strangers long. "What things do you think about?" says she. "Mozart and sex," he replies. "And you?" "Mozart, sex and death". Ursula Gray has orchestrated the piece adroitly and has had the opportunity to work closely with the director, Charles Jarrott, her husband. She also brings off the double event by playing the lead, opposite Patrick Allen, under her stage name, Katharine Blake. (Radio Times, April 14, 1966 - Article by Peter Luke). Cast : Patrick Allen (Don Giovanni), Katharine Blake (Donna Anna), Clare Kelly (Anne), Patsy Ann Noble (Francoise Clouet), Jim Tyson (The Egg Man), Frederick Farley (Rudy Blumenbaum), Mary Henry (Myra Blumenbaum), Kika Markham (Ruth Blumenbaum), Scot Finch (Edward), Charlotte Selwyn (Lady Hamilton), Jonathan Scott (Nelson), Robert Raglan (Tom-Tom) and Guy Deghy (Doctor Bromplus). Notes & Trivia : This episode had a running time of seventy-five minutes and was transmitted from 9:00pm to 10:15pm. Music for this episode was provided by Norman Kay.
Publicity : A Cheery Soul - Hazel Hughes stars as a do-gooder in tonight's Wednesday Play: How many of the Glorious Company of Martyrs were tolerable to their earthly contemporaries? Obviously very few. We are all tempted to hate those who make us feel guilty. One must now add to the hagiography of fiction a character called Miss Docker, known affectionately as Gee - except that she is never known affectionately to anyone because she is so busy doing Good. Certainly when one has seen Miss Docker at it one gets a pretty fair idea why so many of the aforesaid saints and martyrs came to a sticky end. Miss Docker is the creation of Australia's foremost novelist, Patrick White, author of Voss, The Aunt's Sto0ry, and other works. He has also written four plays, none of which has had any success Down Under. Possibly for this reason he has never allowed them to be performed in this country despite the obvious interest in the work of so distinguished a writer. The fact that The Wednesday Play is able to offer a first-ever-in-Britain viewing of A Cheery Soul tonight is largely due to Jonquil Antony who, being a friend of Patrick White, persuaded him that we should be allowed to try out a play of his on a Pommie audience. For purely practical reasons, however, Miss Antony, together with the director, Gilchrist Calder, has transposed this play from New South Wales to South-West England. Thus we shall all be able to see how much of a universal character Miss Docker (as interpreted by Hazel Hughes) really is and whether Mr White has been justified in withholding his plays from us for so long. (Radio Times, April 21, 1966 - Article by Peter Luke). Cast : Hazel Hughes (Miss Docker), Stephen MacDonald (The Reverend Wakeman), Patricia Heneghan (Mrs Wakeman), Aubrey Richards (Mr Custance), Barbara Lott (Mrs Custance), Jane Eccles (Mrs Little), Olwen Griffiths (The Matron), Vivienne Bennett (Mrs Hibble), Mary Holden (Mrs Watmuff), Lucy Griffiths (Miss Dando), May Warden (Mrs Tole), Jack Bligh (Mr Bleeker), Doris Hall (Mrs Bleeker), Dorothy Earsdon (The Schoolgirl), Colin White (Young Tom), Deborah Stanford (Young Millie) and Laurence Archer (Old Tom). Notes & Trivia : This episode had a running time of seventy-five minutes and was transmitted from 9:00pm to 10:15pm. Music for this episode was provided by Tom McCall. This episode is one of twelve episodes from the fourth season of The Wednesday Play which no longer exist.
Publicity
: Michael Goodliffe and Derek Francis
in tonight's Wednesday Play - The Connoisseur: Specific psychological
reasons for homosexuality are now pretty well accepted by thinking people.
Environmental reasons for it do not seem to be of such consequence,
though governors of prisons obviously contend with it, as indeed most
seminarists and members of monastic orders, though these last are doubtless
better equipped to cope.
Script : Hugh Leonard Director : Charles Jarrott Publicity
: The Retreat - Mime replaces dialogue
in much of this Wednesday Play starring Gerry Sullivan: Author Hugh
Leonard originally conceived this play as the second part of his mute
double-bill. The prime half, Silent Song, set in a Trappist monastery,
was seen last February. These two pieces, however, stretched in rehearsal
to nearly twice their scheduled length so that they had to be screened
separately. How, one might ask, can a script be timed which has little
or no dialogue?
Publicity : Ape And Essence - Alc McCowen and Petra Markham in tonight's play: Aldous Huxley published Ape And Essence, his horrific satire about the future, in 1948, a year before George Orwell brought out his 1984. Orwell was inspired by a hatred of totalitarianism, and Huxley by an aversion to the atomic bomb; both phenomena being then fresh in the mind. The difference between these two "protest" novels was the temperamental difference between their authors. Anyone who has read 1984 or who saw the BBC-2 dramatisation of it last November, will realise that it is a hard-hitting, but nevertheless humourless, political tract. Huxley's piece, though equally concussive, is bawdy and witty and concerned, not with politics, but with the humanistic and religious consequences of dropping the bomb. He argues, with tongue in cheek, but nonetheless persuasively, that a race wicked enough to explode a nuclear bomb must, of necessity, be damned. In other words, the Devil has finally triumphed. So we find that the savages inhabiting what is left of Britain eighty years after the bomb are not only badly mutated from the effects of Gamma rays but are in fact worshipping Belial. And why not? It is logical enough. Who else but the Devil desires the degradation and destruction of the human race? As the Arch-Vicar of Belial puts it: "The longer you study modern history, the more evidence you find of Belial's guiding hand". Huxley's book has been dramatised by John Finch whose play The Old Man Of Chelsea Reach was seen on BBC-2 last summer. The director is novelist David Benedictus who is also story editor of The Wednesday Play. Alec McCowen plays the shy professor of botany from New Zealand who has such a terrible time dodging the servants of Belial. (Radio Times, May 12, 1966 - Article by Peter Luke). Cast : Alec McCowen (Alfred Poole), Robert Eddison (The Arch-Vicar), Derek Sydney (The Chief), Petra Markham (Loola), Hazel Douglas (Miss Hook), Sydney Bromley (Craigie), Jenny Lee (Flossie), Ken Parry (The Satanic Science Practitioner), Yvonne Antrobus (The Young Girl), Amanda Reiss (Polly), John Falconer (The Patriarch), Jonathan Scott (The Interviewing Priest) and Martin Carroll (The Director of Food Production). Notes & Trivia : This episode had a running time of seventy-five minutes and was transmitted from 9:00pm to 10:15pm. Music for this episode was provided by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. This episode is one of twelve episodes from the fourth season of The Wednesday Play which no longer exist.
Publicity : Toddler On The Run - Ian Trigger and Jane Knowles in a scene from tonight's play: Morris Todd - the "toddler" of our play - is a dwarf. Perhaps, more accurately, he is a homunculus, a perfect all-male specimen though standing only four-foot-six in his stockinged feet. He is a charming young man except when tactlessly referred to as "sonny", but he will even put up with this if it suits his not always honest purpose. At the time the story begins Morris is under suspicion, and quite rightly, for having robbed St Alphege's Girls' School of their swimming-pool fund. The local newspaper describes him as an evil-looking toddler who needed two hands to hold the revolver with which he menaced the burser. It is his diminutive size plus a sort of ruthless romanticism which makes Morris irresistible to the many women in his life. Among them are his old Gran; Elaine, a nice young woman married to a tight-lipped solicitor; and D K McGovern, a muscular nymphet mfrom St Alphege's School, whom he derides as "a failed hockey player and a social reject". The only person who makes a serious attempt to resist him is Leda, his own true love, who reluctantly goes with him into hiding. Ian Trigger plays Morris Todd, the toddler, who is the brain-dwarf of a gifted novelist, Shena Mackay: a rare bird among young writers of her sex since she does not write about herself. Toddler On The Run is the third is this current series of Wednesday Plays to be directed by James MacTaggart. (Radio Times, May 19, 1966 - Article by Peter Luke). Cast : Ian Trigger (Morris Todd), Anneke Willis (Leda), Jerome Willis (Daniel), Sylvester Morand (Tom), Stanley Lebor (Manny), Geraldine Newman (Elaine), Jane Knowles (Deirdre), Anthony Wager (The CID Sergeant), David Kramer (The Police Sergeant), Grace Newcombe (Gran), Richard Pescud (Father), Annette Kerr (Miss Lambe), Eunice Black (Nurse Wilkins), Mona Bruce (The Matron), Iain Cuthbertson (Major Mallet), Renu Setna (The Indian), David Henderson-Tate (Marcel), William Moore (Mr Collins), Edith MacArthur (Carol), John Carlin (The Evangelist) and Kathleen Heath (The St John's Ambulance Lady). Notes & Trivia : This episode had a running time of seventy-five minutes and was transmitted from 9:00pm to 10:15pm. Music for this episode was provided by Herbert Chappell.
Publicity
: Sandor Eles and Rosalie Crutchley
in The Wednesday Play - The assassination of Trotsky is the subject
of tonight's play, The Executioner: Between Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili,
better known as Joseph Stalin, and his rival Lev Davidovich Bronstein,
alias Leon Trotsky, it was war to the death. Both, as it happens, are
now dead - Lev having been helped on his way by Joe as we shall see
in this documentary play by Robert Muller.
Publicity : Brenda Bruce and Sydney Tafler star in tonight's play by David Turner - Way Off Beat: Arthur Bradshaw is to be found in the "scampi belt" which surrounds any large city. He is a fixer. He has got on in the world and his ambitions are still soaring. Tonight we see him in action. From behind the well-appointed cocktail bar in his lounge he surveys the scene. His businesses are thriving, his house is large, and there's a Jag in the drive. Where can his parasitic talents turn to next? If only his daughter could become a ballroom champion he could branch out into a new field. A night club! What a golden prospect. As he says to his wife, "You with your couturiers, me with my coiffeur, and Linda with her boite de nuit … The Bradshaws will have a sort of stranglehold on culture in these parts". Arthur plans his campaign like a general. But his main weapon is money - because deep down he believes that anyone or anything can be bought. Produced by James MacTaggart and directed by Toby Robertson, the cast is led by Sydney Tafler, Brenda Bruce, Helen Fraser, Jimmy Hanley, and a new face to most of us, Gordon Reid. This is David Turner in his best comic style. But it is comedy with a kick in it. (Radio Times, June 2, 1966 - Article by Tony Garnett). Cast : Brenda Bruce (Betty Bradshaw), Sydney Tafler (Arthur Bradshaw), Helen Fraser (Linda), Gordon Reid (Noirman), Stephanie Bidmead (Vicky Rayburn), Jimmy Hanley (Antonio Laveline), Peter Wilson Holmes (The Master Of Ceremonies), June Brown (Mrs Wentworth), Gareth Forward (Colin), Stephen Patrick (Alberto), Georgina Hale (Jill), Trevor Bowen (Piers) and Noel Johnson (The Master Of Ceremonies). Notes & Trivia : This episode had a running time of seventy-five minutes and was transmitted from 9:00pm to 10:15pm. Music for this episode was composed and conducted by Carl Davis. This episode of The Wednesday Play was repeated on August 30th, 1967 as part of a series of selected editions chosen for re-transmission.
Publicity : A Soiree At Bossom's Hotel - Raymond Huntley and Fabia Drake in tonight's play by Simon Raven: The façade of Bossom's Hotel in Mayfair is amorphous rather than discreet and few strangers would ever be tempted to go in there. But Simon Raven takes us behind this façade into a world unknown to most: the world of the aristocracy and the upper classes. This is new territory for the Wednesday Play and those expecting it to be a rich and rare one will be disappointed because the interior of Bossom's tends to be seedy in a well-bred sort of way, like most of its inhabitants. Presiding over this uncommon little enclave is Edna Bossom, an engaging old character of dubious origin, who once had a protector who was a Very Important Person Indeed. In fact, according to Superintendent Willow, he had cousins "who live in a large house which you may have noticed at one end of St James' Park". Hence her blue-blooded clientele. In subtle contrast to life at Bossom's we are given a brief glance of the world of the rich and influential, the new plutocracy who, while bearing still the vestiges of bourgeois Puritanism, have worked to acquire the trappings of the nobility and gentry. But they are still not "quite-quite" and are consequently at odds with the nobility and gentry themselves who, though much less rich, are even more influential. Between the two go the police, indifferent as ever to social distinction, but who find it difficult to resist the conflicting pressures when a major scandal threatens to break at Bossom's. (Radio Times, June 9, 1966 - Article by Peter Luke). Cast : Fabia Drake (Edna Bossom), Raymond Huntley (Superintendent Willow), Sarah Lawson (Mrs Clodia Wentworth), Wallas Eaton (Gert), Sally Bazeley (Virginia Bray), Roddy Maude-Roxby (Captain Rudolf Porlock), Barbara Couper (The Dowager Lady Langouste), Clive Morton (Sir Jacinth Overtone, BT), Geoffrey Dunn (Professor Gregious), Geoffrey Rose (Inspector Keane), Samantha and Samanda (The Dancers), Henry McGee (The First Demolition Officer), Jeremy Young (The Second Demolition Officer), John Rapley (Hugh Snelby) and John Kidd (The Butler). Notes & Trivia : This episode had a running time of seventy-five minutes and was transmitted from 9:00pm to 10:15pm. This episode is one of twelve episodes from the fourth season of The Wednesday Play which no longer exist.
Publicity
: Cock, Hen And Courting Pit - Tonight's
play - the last in the present series - stars Maurice Roeves and Nicola
Pagett: "Torrid" was a favourite word used to describe certain
films in the 1930s. Nowadays they would probably carry an "X"
certificate.
I would like to use the old adjective again to describe tonight's play
by David Halliwell whose name first came to us through the critical
success of his stage play Little Malcolm And His Struggle Against The
Eunuchs. It is simply a very intense love affair between a boy and a
girl whose passion is mutually destructive. There is nothing salacious
about it: it is remarkable only in that few people reach this pitch
of intensity in a lifetime; most never do, and the few are not to be
envied.
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