First play on Perth and Brisbane TV has historic revival after 60 years

by FilmInk staff

A Sleep of Prisoners, the verse play by English dramatist Christopher Fry, is being performed on Thursday 4 March at both St George’s Cathedral in Perth, and St John’s Cathedral in Brisbane.

This is 60 years after the same play was filmed live by ABC television in both cathedrals, becoming the first small-screen drama made in either city.

The 1961 productions ran for 75 minutes and were both directed by Raymond Menmuir and starred Ron Haddrick. The Perth production was broadcast from St George’s Cathedral in January 1961; Haddrick and Menmuir then flew across country and filmed a Brisbane version in St John’s two months later.

Brisbane writer, and regular FilmInk contributor, Stephen Vagg approached both cathedrals last year with the idea of staging a one-night only revival of the play in Perth and Brisbane to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the original broadcasts.

“Television drama production in Australia is traditionally associated with the cities of Sydney and Melbourne,” said Vagg. “There was even an industry slang term for the cities outside those two places ‘BAPH’ (Brisbane Adelaide Perth Hobart).

“Yet Brisbane and Perth have their own rich history of making TV drama – from recent efforts such as Harrow and The Heights, through Round the Twist and the 1980s revival of Mission Impossible, back to the 1960s live plays from the ABC at Toowong and the WA musical The Good Oil.

“Before any of these was A Sleep of Prisoners, broadcast in both cities only a few years after television was introduced to Australia. It is thrilling that St George’s and St John’s have agreed to host live readings of the play in the exact same locations they were first recorded in Perth and Brisbane sixty years ago.”

Vagg said the play’s original author, Christopher Fry, was a towering figure of English post-war entertainment, including working on the screenplay of Ben Hur (1959). “No one performs Fry much these days but he was very much in vogue for a time after World War Two,” said Vagg. “He was an excellent writer – the language is a delight.”

A Sleep of Prisoners, Fry’s lyrical reflection on life, death, violence and purgatory was originally commissioned as part of the Festival of Britain; it opened at St George’s church in Regent Street, London in May 1951, with a cast including Stanley Baker and Denholm Elliott. The play is set in a bombed-out church during WWII and focuses on four soldiers and their dreams of biblical stories.

Vagg says the play was originally selected for filming by the ABC in part because it could be performed in a church. “In 1961, neither Perth or Brisbane had the studio facilities to shoot television drama,” Vagg said. “However, one of the ABC’s leading TV directors, Ray Menmuir, had lived in both cities and knew where he could find cathedrals that would make an ideal filming location for a small screen production of A Sleep of Prisoners.”

It was decided to film in West Australia first. Menmuir flew to Perth along with Haddrick, using local actors to play the other three parts at St George’s Cathedral. Menmuir and Haddrick then travelled to Brisbane, re-cast the other roles locally, and broadcast the play once more at St John’s Cathedral on 2 March 1961.

In a symbolic reaching of hands across the nation, A Sleep of Prisoners will be concurrently performed on 4 March at St George’s Cathedral in Perth. “I think it’s fascinating that Brisbane and Perth both started TV drama production with versions of the same play, and the same director and lead actor,” said Vagg. “So it’s fitting that sixty years later the original cathedrals are hosting live readings of that play on the same night.”

The 2021 Perth production of A Sleep of Prisoners will be performed by local actors under the direction of Stuart Halusz.

The 2021 Brisbane performance will be directed by Rob Pensalfini, one of Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble’s founders and its artistic director since 2001. He said QSE had a long track record of performing both verse drama and contemporary local stories.

“We have worked extensively with prisoners, returned military personnel with PTSD, and wartime stories,” Mr Pensalfini said.

“Our mission at QSE is to bring classical stories to life for a contemporary local audience and in particular through the lens of the marginalised, which is exactly what Fry did with A Sleep of Prisoners, juxtaposing key biblical texts with modern characters in extremis.

“The key components of this play – dramatic verse, liminal and subliminal states, deprivation, and moral complexity – resonate strongly with the themes which QSE explores in its work both on stage and in our communities.

“The important place of this text in Australian performance history, which led to one of the first televised Australian-produced dramas, demonstrates the importance of classical stories and verse drama to the development of new and vibrant forms of performance.”

Tickets for the Brisbane show, which starts at 7.30pm on Thursday 4 March, are just $15. It will feature a lecture from Stephen Vagg on the history of the 1961 TV production.

For bookings, visit:

https://www.trybooking.com/events/landing?eid=711888&

Tickets for the Perth show, which starts at 7.00 pm on Thursday 4 March, are $50.

https://www.perthcathedral.org/event/a-sleep-of-prisoners/?instance_id=90452

Brisbane A Sleep of Prisoners cast:

Leah Fitzgerald Quinn (Private Peter Able)

Rebecca Murphy (Corporal Joe Adams)

Rob Pensalfini (Private Tim Meadows),

Angus Thorburn (Private David King).

Director: Rob Pensalfini

Perth Cast

Andrew Hale as Private Tim Meadows