Category: Oliver Wake

Disputed Territory: Drama and the Falklands

OLIVER WAKE

Every major conflict in living memory has become the subject of drama almost the moment it was over. The Falklands war, which this month reached its thirtieth anniversary and is again in the news due to renewed tensions between Britain and Argentina over the islands, is no exception. Numerous plays about the conflict reached the stage and radio in its aftermath, but none caught the attention of the public at large. However, when television tackled the subject for the mass audience, the results were frequently politically charged and contentious.

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Wear a Very Big Hat (1965)

OLIVER WAKE

The Wednesday Play; Writer: Eric Coltart; Producer: James MacTaggart; Director: Ken Loach

The Wednesday Play (1964-70) is often cited in discussions of 1960s television drama, but normally with reference to only a handful of its most well-known plays. This misrepresents the series as a whole, which comprised over 160 plays. Even some of the dramas from the series’ most acclaimed practitioners, such as Ken Loach and Dennis Potter, are overlooked in favour of their bolder, more controversial plays, with preference given to those that still exist. The neglect of plays erased from the archive is understandable, but a lack of primary evidence is no reason to disregard them entirely. Their particular attributes and secondary evidence demonstrate that many of them are well worth our attention. For example, 1965’s Wear a Very Big Hat is fascinating both as an example of The Wednesday Play’s early attempts at youthful contemporaneity and as director Ken Loach’s first entry in the series.

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Conversation at Night (1969)

OLIVER WAKE

Thirty-Minute Theatre Writer: Friedrich Dürrenmatt; Translated by: Robert David MacDonald; Producer: Innes Lloyd; Director: Rudolph Cartier

Thirty-Minute Theatre was a drama strand instigated by the BBC to return shorter plays, transmitted live, to the television schedules.1 It began in October 1965 with a version of Roald Dahl’s Parson’s Pleasure, and ultimately produced over 250 dramas, although by the end of 1968 the live element was had been entirely dropped. 1969’s Conversation at Night was director Rudolph Cartier’s fourth entry into the BBC2 anthology, following Brainscrew in 1966, The News-Benders in 1968, and the Hitler segment of the These Men Are Dangerous trilogy from earlier in 1969.2 It was Cartier’s last production under BBC contract as he returned to freelance work thereafter.3

The short play was written by leading post-war Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt, who is best known for his full-length satirical stage dramas The Visit and The Physicists. Conversation at Night started out as a German radio play in 1952 and transferred to the Munich stage the same year. It came to Britain as a radio play first, translated and produced by Christopher Holme for the BBC’s Third Programme in 1963.4 The stage version premiered in London in 1966. For television, the play was translated by Robert David MacDonald and produced by Innes Lloyd.

The play is a duologue between a prominent liberal writer in an unnamed European dictatorship and the state assassin. Confronted in his own study, the writer attempts to defend his freedom of expression in the face of the assassin’s advocacy of the status quo. The play is more than a Platonic dialogue however, also discussing “what the executioner calls ‘the art of dying’, of accepting death without rebellion, bitterness or terror”, as The Times reported, with the writer ultimately able to accept his demise with a quiet dignity.5

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  1. Tony Aspler, ‘Thirty-Minute Theatre’, Radio Times, 30 September 1965, p. 54. ↩

  2. Brainscrew, tx. BBC2, 12 December 1966; The News-Benders, tx. BBC2, 10 January 1968; These Men Are Dangerous: Hitler, tx. BBC2, 27 January 1969. ↩

  3. Anon, ‘Guinness and Gielgud in BBC-2 play’, The Stage and Television Today, 20 March 1969, p. 10. ↩

  4. Conversation at Night, tx. Third Programme, 29 November 1963. ↩

  5. Henry Raynor, ‘A gentle executioner’, The Times, 9 May 1969, p. 16. ↩

The July Plot (1964)

OLIVER WAKE

The Wednesday Play Writer: Roger Manvell; Adapted from (novel) Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel; Producer: Peter Luke; Director: Rudolph Cartier

Broadcast in late 1964, The July Plot is an interesting example of a television play made during a formative moment in the history of British television drama.1 It was in production as the BBC’s drama strategy was being reformulated, resulting in the shake-up of the Corporation’s drama anthology output and the creation of the genre-defining The Wednesday Play (1964-70), as part of which it was ultimately transmitted. The July Plot is also an early example of drama documentary based around major events from within living memory, and a rare instance of its particular subject being tackled for a British audience. With this article, we aim to give an insight into the play’s production and an overview of its effect upon its audience.

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  1. The Wednesday Play: ‘The July Plot’, BBC1, tx. 9 December 1964. ↩

Doctor Korczak and the Children (1962)

OLIVER WAKE

Studio 4 Adapted and translated by: Rudolph Cartier; From: Erwin Sylvanus (play); Director: Rudolph Cartier

Doctor Korczak and the Children is one of the most unusual and compelling television plays of the 1960s.1 Its subject is tragic and fascinating, while the production itself is interesting in its own right for a myriad of reasons. The extremity of its rejection of naturalistic television drama conventions is startling and it remains an almost unique surviving example of a period of such experimentation at the BBC at the beginning of 1960s. It also illustrates how the reach of a stage text can be expanded to whole new audiences with sympathetic translation into the new medium. This article aims to give an overview of this extraordinary production and its reception by its audience.

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  1. Studio 4: ‘Doctor Korczak and the Children’, BBC, tx. 13 August 1962. ↩