''The Sergeant from Burralee'' is an Australian television play written by
Phillip Grenville Mann
Phillip Grenville Mann (24 December 1921 – 19 June 1990) was an Australian actor, playwright, stage director and manager, and writer.
He won a series of prizes as a young writer. He served in the Royal Australian Navy.
He worked for six years ...
. The play was also broadcast by the BBC and screened for West German television.
It was turned into a radio play in 1970. Mann then adapted it into a play ''Day of Glory''.
Plot
In the 1830s, a white settler is speared in the Newastle district. An Aboriginal, Jacko, is charged with the crime. However Captain Alcot interrogates Jacko, becomes convinced of his innocence, and sends a despatch to Sydney saying he is going to release the man. That night a party is held in the officers' mess and, in a drunken stupor, Lt Ned Louden shoots Jacko in the back.
Urged on by Nathaniel Carlton, the resident magistrate, Captain Alcot writes to Sydney to explain the situation. Louden is arrested and brought to Sydney for a trial. Thomas Morland, the acting attorney-general, is sent to Newcastle to investigate the murder.
Captain Alcot wishes to keep on the good side of the land-hungry Carlton so they attempt to defend the drunken lieutenant who has shot a native. Neither believe the prisoner Jacko had anything to do with the murder of a white settler, since he was captured 60 miles away from the crime. So they bribe Sergeant Constantine, who arrested Jacko, into saying that the place of arrest was close to Newcastle.
At a trial in Sydney, the lieutenant is charged with murder by the Acting Attorney-General. False testimony by Constantine brings a verdict of not guilty; but the playwright makes it clear that it is as much a victory as a defeat—"people will have second thoughts" about molesting aborigines after this.
Cast
*Alistair Duncan as Thomas Morland, the acting Attorney General
*Deryck Barnes as Sgt Constantine
*
Gordon Glenwright
Gordon Charles Glenwright (17 March 1918 – 25 May 1985) was an Australian actor, stage manager and playwright. He was familiar to audiences for his appearances on stage, television and film. He described himself as a "tradesman". Glenwright se ...
as Captain Alcot
*
Candy Williams
Claude "Candy" Williams (1929–1983) was an Aboriginal Australian musician, known for his country and western singing, often termed the Aboriginal country music. He was an active advocate for the advancement of his people, and also appeared in s ...
as Jacko
*
Stewart Ginn
Stewart Ginn (born 2 June 1949) is an Australian professional golfer.
Early life
Ginn was born in Melbourne. He grew up behind the twelfth green of the Royal Melbourne Golf Club. Early in his life "he used to caddy at Royal Melbourne." He th ...
as Nathaniel Carlton
*Fernande Gynn as Constantine's wife Bessie
*Hugh Stewart as Robert McDonald
*John Gray as Sgt Lane
*
Reg Lye
Reginald Thomas Lye (14 October 1912 – 23 March 1988), was an Australian actor who worked extensively in Australia and England. He was one of the busiest Australian actors of the 1950s, appearing in the majority of locally shot features at th ...
as Joshua Beer
*Keith Buckley as Jack Salisbury
*Noanie Roathsay as Matha Sailsbury
*
Edward Hepple
Edward Hepple (4 June 1914 – 3 September 2005) billed variously as Eddie Hepple and Ted Hepple, was an Australian actor, voice artist, producer, director, playwright and television scriptwriter, known for his roles in theatre, television seri ...
*Jon Dennis as Newton
*Douglas Bladen as Sentry
*Lance Bennett as Taylor
*Phillip Ross as Gaoler
*Max Meldrum as the lieutenant
*
Nigel Lovell
Nigel Tasman Lovell (27 January 1916 – 13 December 2001) was an Australian stage, radio, film and television actor, and producer of opera and both stage and radio drama.
History
Lovell was born in Sydney, a son of Tasman Lovell, Professor of ...
*Moray Powell
Production
The play was based on a real life trial when a soldier was charged with the murder of an Aboriginal. It was written by Philip Grenville Mann, an Australian writer who was living in England. He got the idea for the play after reading historical records at
Australia House
The High Commission of Australia in London is the diplomatic mission of Australia in the United Kingdom. It is located in Australia House, a Grade II listed building. It was Australia's first diplomatic mission and is the longest continuously ...
in London; he read about the accidental shooting of an Aboriginal during the time of Governor Phillip and did further research. He wrote it originally under the title ''The Sergeant from Lone Pine''.
The play won equal first prize in the 1959 New South Wales Journalists' Club Award out of 250 entries. (The other winner was J.V. Warner's ''World Without End''.) President of the Journalists' Club was
Kenneth Slessor
Kenneth Adolphe Slessor (27 March 190130 June 1971) was an Australian poet, journalist and official war correspondent in World War II. He was one of Australia's leading poets, notable particularly for the absorption of modernist influences int ...
and the judges, representing each of the three Sydney television stations, were Brett Porter (ATN-7),
Raymond Menmuir
Raymond Edward Menmuir (10 September 1930 – 26 March 2016) was a British-Australian director and producer. His career included producing 44 episodes of ''The Professionals (TV series), The Professionals'' and directing 12 episodes of ''Upstairs ...
(ABN-2) and Peter Benardos (TCN-9). Menmuir says the moment he read it, he suggested the ABC buy it. "It's a darned fine play," said Menmuir. "The scenes are short, the action moves swiftly and smoothy and it has a universality of appeal."
Mann returned to Australia in 1961 after six years in England and replaced
Rex Rienits
Rex Rienits (17 April 1909 – 1971) was an Australian writer of radio, films, plays and TV. He was a journalist before becoming one of the leading radio writers in Australia. He moved to England in 1949 and worked for a number of years there. He ...
as the ABC's drama editor. He would later write the historical ABC drama series ''The Patriots''.
It was shot live at the ABC's studios in Sydney. Alistair Duncan was an English actor who had recently settled in Australia and had played Captain Bligh's secretary in ''Stormy Petrel''. Sets and costumes were by Geoff Wedlock. Nine sets were constructed for the play, including gaols and courtrooms.
Reception
The ''Sydney Morning Herald'' wrote that "it is an admirable play, dealing searchingly with the impulses, compulsions and motives of a gallery of characters...The production... was quite gripping; the play itself, most notably in the courtroom scenes, showed how telling a medium TV can be... this play was one of the best the A.B.C. has done."
Val Marshall from the Sunday edition of the ''Herald'' said it "let me with that rather unsatisfactory feeling of a good piece of material well handled, but which could have been a great deal better than it was" saying that "it got first rate treatment from Raymond Menmuir" but felt 90 minutes was too long and Duncan was miscast."
1961 BBC version
In May 1960 the BBC announced they would film the play, then known as ''The Sergeant of Lone Pine''. The play was filmed by the BBC in 1961 as ''The Attorney General'' It was directed by Harold Clayton.
Cast
*
John Clements as Thomas Morland
*
Andre Van Gyseghem as Nathaniel Carlton
*Olive McFarland as Bessie Constantine
*Anthony Bate as Sergeant Lane
*Norman Mitchell as Sergeant Constantine
*James Sharkey as Lieutenant Ned Louden
*Richard Vernon as Captain Alcot
*Michael Danvers-Walker as James Newton
*Leonard Cracknell as Frank Taylor
*Sonny Pillay as Jacko
*John Wilding as The Sentry
*Ronald Adam as Robert MacDonald
*Christopher Hodge as John Sanders
*Robert Cawdron as Joshua Beer
*Carole Ann Ford as Martha Salisbury
Reception
The ''Daily Telegraph'' called it "strong drama... an uncommonly interesting 90 minutes."
The ''Sunday Times'' called it "a solidly made, thoroughly decent piece of joinery."
Radio
It was also adapted for radio.
''Day of Glory''
Mann adapted the story into a play ''Day of Glory'' which had its debut in 1964 at the Old Tote in Sydney.
The play was revived in 1970 in Melbourne.
''The Age'' called it "a play of good ideas treated with good stagecraft."
See also
*
References
External links
''The Sergeant from Burralee''at
AustLit
AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource (also known as AustLit: Australian Literature Gateway; and AustLit: The Resource for Australian Literature), usually referred to simply as AustLit, is an internet-based, non-profit collaboration betwee ...
''The Sergeant from Burralee''at
National Film and Sound Archive
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA), known as ScreenSound Australia from 1999 to 2004, is Australia's audiovisual archive, responsible for developing, preserving, maintaining, promoting and providing access to a national co ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sergeant from Burralee
1960s Australian television plays
1962 television plays
Fiction set in the 1830s
1960s Australian plays
Television plays directed by Ray Menmuir
Television plays by Phillip Grenville Mann
Television plays filmed in Sydney
Australian Broadcasting Corporation television plays
1970s Australian radio dramas