The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1961 film)

• Fred Parslow
• Barry Pree

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.[5] 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 stage play was very popular with audiences.[6]

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".[1] 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."[1]

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."[1]

• Production details of Union St Theatre run of play at Ausstage
• Production details of Russell St Theatre run of play at Ausstage
• Mystery of a Hansom Cab 1961 TV play at Austlit