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The Slaughter of St Teresa's Day

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The Slaughter of St. Teresa's Day
SMH 8 Match 1959
Written byPeter Kenna
Date premiered11 March 1959
Place premieredElizabethan Theatre Trust, Sydney
Original languageEnglish
SubjectCatholicism
families
SettingKings Cross, Sydney

The Slaughter of St. Teresa's Day is a play by Australian author Peter Kenna.

Plot

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Oola Maguire, a bookie, holds a party every St. Teresa's Day. The guests are the people she has quarreled with in the past year, and there is only one rule: Firearms must be parked in the hall. Her daughter Thelma is brought home from the convent she attends with two nuns.

Background

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SMH 16 March 1959

It won a National Playwrights Competition in 1958 and was produced in Sydney the following year by the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust. The judges of the competition were Hugh Hunt and Kylie Tennant.[1][2]

Judge Kylie Tennant called it "a witty commentary on human behaviour, passion, pride and vanity and the curious innocence which keeps people lovable for all their cunning and downright wickedness. It has humour, tolerance and the ability to bring people on the stage alive."[3]

Kenna wrote the play while rehearsing in The Bells Are Ringing at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne. "Sometimes its easier to write when you have to squeeze time in for writing", he said.[4]

Kenna said the play was "about outlaws. Not outlaws in the sense that they are rejected by society, but outlaws in the sense that they break some of the rules."[5]

Kenna revised the play for publication by Currency Press in 1972. According to one account "Some scenes have been re-written so that what was formerly spelt out in dialogue is now left to visual symbolism and the audience's imagination; an entire scene in which the statue of St Teresa was smashed has been removed. Not only did this parallel too closely the smashing of the dolls in 'The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll' but its purpose was only to underline a point already well established."[6]

1959 original stage production

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SMH 11 March 1959

The original 1959 stage production was directed by Robin Lovejoy. It was the fourth "straight" Australian play from the Elizabethan Theatre Trust.

Kenna wrote the part of Oona for Neva Carr Glynn.[7] "It's one of the most difficult parts I've had", she said. "But it's a magnificent one."[8]

Original cast

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Reception

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The Sydney Morning Herald said the play "has the kind of power and color to give much incidental excitement immediately to an audience."[9]

The Sydney Tribune said it was "a play that every theatre-lover should see; whether you like it or loathe it, you won't be bored by it."[10] The Woman's Weekly called it "a lively, amusing play that deserves a good run."[11]

The Bulletin called it "a study in opposites, but there is no real conflict. The main action is between mother and daughter, and since from Act I mother has acquiesced in daughter's going into a convent, if only to get rid of her, there is no real feeling of a problem solved when she goes there. A play like this, fact piled on fact, spaced-out by "delicious cameos", or conversation pieces that hold-up the plot, increases one's regressive nostalgia for the play-of-stratagem, where a conflict of wills produces a swift continuity of action and counteraction."[12]

Reviewing it years later, Filmink magazine said the play "has a brilliant core character, a fascinating world, a rogue's gallery of colourful support players, clever dramatic set-ups that you know are going to be paid off in exciting ways (“guns left at the door”, “no drinking”), and a very solid dramatic situation (a gangster tries to seduce a criminal mother and convent-educated daughter). Kenna writes with a wonderful compassion, humour and empathy for these outsiders; he seems to like, and understand, all his characters, be they prostitutes, murderers or nuns."[13]

1960 Australian TV adaptation

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See The Slaughter of St. Teresa's Day (1960 film)

Radio

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Kenna adapted the play for radio in a version which broadcast in 1960 and 1961.[14]

1962 British TV adaptation

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The Slaughter of St. Teresa's Day
Written byPeter Kenna
Produced byJohn Jacobs
StarringSusannah York
Release date
Running time
75 mins
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

The play was filmed by the BBC in 1962, when Kenna was living in England.[13]

The Sunday Times reviewing a later Kenna play Goodbye Gloria Goodbye said it was "not wholly successful, but like Kenna's earlier The Slaughter of St Teresa's Day... of a distinctive flavour"[15]

Cast

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  • Susannah York as Thelma Maguire
  • Madge Ryan as Oola Maguire
  • Vincent Ball as Horrie Darcel
  • Maggie Fitzgibbon as Wilma
  • J.G. Devlin as Paddy Maguire
  • Molly Urquhart as Sister Mary Luke
  • Margaret Wedlake as Sister Mary Mark
  • Ethel Gabriel as Essie Farrell
  • Johnny Briggs as Whitey Maguire
  • John Tate (actor) as Charlie
  • Reg Lye as Barney

Radio

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The play also aired on British radio in 1963.[16]

References

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  1. ^ Richard Waterhouse, 'Kenna, Peter Joseph (1930–1987)' Archived 2015-04-17 at the Wayback Machine, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 2007, accessed online 3 April 2015
  2. ^ "It seems to me". The Australian Women's Weekly. Vol. 26, no. 42. 25 March 1959. p. 12. Archived from the original on 1 May 2024. Retrieved 11 June 2016 – via National Library of Australia.
  3. ^ Tennant, Kylie (19 December 1958). "Talent without experience in play contest". Sydney Morning Herald. p. 2. Archived from the original on 1 May 2024. Retrieved 6 August 2020.
  4. ^ Nicklin, Lenore (11 January 1975). "Sisters Gift Rescues a Writer". Sydney Morning Herald. p. 8. Archived from the original on 1 May 2024. Retrieved 6 August 2020.
  5. ^ "Glasshouse for Actors in Warehouse". Sydney Morning Herald. 23 February 1959. p. 2.
  6. ^ "Drama in Paddo revitalised". The Canberra Times. 23 September 1972. p. 12. Archived from the original on 1 May 2024. Retrieved 3 April 2015 – via National Library of Australia.
  7. ^ "New Trust project gives fresh scope to Australian talent". ABC Weekly. Vol. 21, no. 6. 11 February 1959. p. 4. Archived from the original on 1 May 2024. Retrieved 6 August 2020.
  8. ^ Moses, John (8 March 1959). "Rough House at the Elizabethan". Sydney Morning Herald. p. 84. Archived from the original on 1 May 2024. Retrieved 6 August 2020.
  9. ^ "Fun and Tears in Prize Play". Sydney Morning Herald. 12 March 1959. p. 5. Archived from the original on 20 November 2023. Retrieved 6 August 2020.
  10. ^ "Slaughter of Sf. Teresa's Day:". Tribune. No. 1094. New South Wales, Australia. 1 April 1959. p. 6. Archived from the original on 1 May 2024. Retrieved 6 August 2020 – via National Library of Australia.
  11. ^ "It seems to me". The Australian Women's Weekly. Vol. 26, no. 42. 25 March 1959. p. 12. Archived from the original on 1 May 2024. Retrieved 6 August 2020 – via National Library of Australia.
  12. ^ "SUNDRY SHOWS TALKIES THEATRE MUSIC ART Stage and Music". The Bulletin. Vol. 80, no. 4127. 18 March 1959. p. 24. Archived from the original on 1 May 2024. Retrieved 6 August 2020.
  13. ^ a b Vagg, Stephen (October 19, 2020). "Forgotten Australian TV Plays – The Slaughter of St Teresa's Day". Filmink. Archived from the original on June 10, 2022. Retrieved May 1, 2024.
  14. ^ "AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING COMMISSION 2CY 2CN". The Canberra Times. Vol. 35, no. 9, 810. 14 January 1961. p. 15. Archived from the original on 1 May 2024. Retrieved 6 August 2020 – via National Library of Australia.
  15. ^ Purser, Philip (April 5, 1964). "Dawn of the New Drama?". Sunday Times. p. 13.
  16. ^ "Today's Broadcasting Programmes". The Daily Telegraph. Sep 18, 1963. p. 18.
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