The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1961 film)

"The Mystery of a Hansom Cab"
The General Motors Hour episode
Episode no. Season 2
Episode 2
Directed by Rod Kinnear
Teleplay by Barry Pree
Original air date 5 August 1961
Running time 90 mins

The Mystery of a Hansom Cab is a 1961 Australian TV drama play based on Barry Pree's 1961 play adaptation of the novel by Fergus Hume.[1]

The play had just completed a 12-week run in Melbourne.[2]

Cast

  • Fred Parslow
  • Barry Pree

Production

Actor-writer Barry Pree had adapted the novel into a stage play. It was the first commissioned play for the Union Theatre Repertory Company, later the Melbourne Theatre Company by its first writer in residence.[3] Pree took a farcical approach to the material, turning it into a spoof of old time melodramas. It debuted at the Union Theatre in Parkville on 9 January 1961 and ran until 4 February, then had a run at Russell Street Theatre from March until May.

The TV adaptation was basically a filmed version of the stage performance. It was filmed in a theatre and included the reactions of the audience applauding the hero and booing the villain, with occasional cutaways to a pianist playing "mood music".[4] The Sydney Morning Herald said Barry Pree played "a personably virtuous hero with a variable Irish accent, cheerfully mixed top-hatted histrionics with music-hall singing and dancing, a barrow-load of deliberate anachronisms, and some mockery of modern Melbourne in the style of intimate revue."[4]

Reception

The TV critic for the Sydney Morning Herald called it "an interesting experiment... only partially successful in terms of the special techniques of television. There were too many long-distance shots, of doll-like .figures on stage; not enough of the searching intimacy of expression on which television thrives."[4]

References

  1. ↑ "Desi loves Lucy again— on camera". The Australian Women's Weekly. 29, (12). Australia, Australia. 23 August 1961. p. 19. Retrieved 26 February 2017 – via National Library of Australia.
  2. ↑ "Author, 23, in rare double". The Age. 17 August 1961. p. 12.
  3. ↑ https://variety.com/2003/legit/news/oz-s-golden-age-1117892067/
  4. 1 2 3 "TV Revival Of "Hansom Gab" Mystery". Sydney Morning Herald. 7 August 1961. p. 7.
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