by Stephen Vagg

Australian television drama has always tended to be conservative, whether in subject matter and/or treatment – it’s generally too expensive and has to appeal to too broad an audience for things to get too arty. But occasionally, the hair gets let down, as with Casualty, a 30-minutes episode of the anthology series Australian Playhouse.

The story takes place in a hospital, but is far from typical TV medical drama fare. It revolves around two men sitting in the waiting room, a Young Man (Martin Harris) and an Old Man (Ben Gabriel). Both have trouble getting attention from the Sister (Shirley Cameron) on duty.

Around ten minutes in, the penny starts to drop that (SPOILERS) this isn’t a regular hospital, but rather a gateway to Heaven, with the Sister being an angel and the two men trying to get past her. It’s a stimulating, unusual piece, with some very good acting. The script was written by John Croyston and directed by Storry Walton, both significant figures at the ABC during this time. Croyston’s script can be accessed online via the NAA.

Storry Walton is still with us. I watched a copy of Casualty with him and asked Mr Walton for his memories about the production.

“I collaborated as producer and director with John Croyston in four of his television screenplays for the ABC – Casualty, Limbo, Construction and The Runaway.

“They were each produced in the hectic and creative period of the late ‘60s when television was new, its creative parameters free, and the ABC open to experiment in form and content. And John and I were among the first cohort of writers, producers and directors, mostly young, ready to take up the opportunity to exploit that edgy space. We did so with the unswerving encouragement of Neil Hutchison, Head of Drama and Features, and later David Goddard.

“My production of the script looks very staid by today’s standards (even perhaps by the standards of the day), and rather lacking in the subtleties that are there in the script to reveal.  However, I think the show is useful as an example of a teleplay that — while it would never otherwise have seen the light of day in a ratings-led, populist-leaning broadcasting environment — represents the kind of intellectual and imaginative output that a public broadcaster like the ABC was bound to produce – and did! Among its traditional narrative-based plays, there was always room for experiment. Casualty is one such production. It is non-naturalistic; characterisation is limited but symbolic as in a medieval morality play; and its style is certainly undramatic.

“John drew on his Catholic background to set his play in a bare white hospital waiting room, which is in fact the waiting room between life and death. It is supervised by a nurse in the nun-like veil of the day – St. Peter as a woman in one moment, and tender lover at another. The play revolves around the acceptance of death by the old man, who comes to the waiting room hard-worn by life and homeless, ready for transition, and the belligerent incomprehension of the young man as to why here is there. He is sent back as too immature for the reward of death.

“Looking at the play today, I am reminded what a fine, thoughtful screen actor Ben Gabriel was. Such presence and understanding of the screen.

“I am reminded also, what a special device the close-up was in those days. When television sets were quite small, a forehead to chin shot (known as a bcu or big close-up) was about life-size on a home tv set in a sitting room. Its intimacy was prized, and I used it very selectively for maximum impact. Ben Gabriel and Shirley Cameron use its intimacy so well in this case.

“Les Weldon was one of the wonderfully responsive ABC technical producers/lighting supervisors (called TPs) of the day. He was one who was prepared to disobey the rigid technical rules imposed in those early days of the image orthicon camera tubes, which required in every image – that is, in every shot of a drama, a balance of tones from white through grey to black – it was called the grey scale and every camera on the studio floor a had its own control technician in the control-room to ensure obedience to the rules. Every image had to have a percentage of so much white, so much grey and so much black – and the Technical Producer could theoretically override a director’s creative lighting wishes.

“There’s an awful lot of unapproved white in Casualty. I wanted, not an ethereal feel, but a sense of white limbo. Rules required all flattage (walls) to be painted in tones of grey. Breaking the rules therefore, Les Weldon collaborated with designer Jack Montgomery to paint them white. The nurse in her stark white veil is photographed against the stark white walls (not officially approved) and the final shot is a study in white. No cameras were hurt in the production, and none of us was cast into professional oblivion. So, it worked. I took white limbo even further in another of John’s plays entitled (guess what?) Limbo.

The author wishes to thank Storry Walton for his contribution to this article (well, he basically co-wrote the whole thing).

For more articles like this, read:

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