The Slaughter of St Teresa's Day

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

The Slaughter of St. Teresa's Day
Written byPeter Kenna
Date premiered11 March 1959
Place premieredSydney
Original languageEnglish
SubjectCatholicism
families

Plot

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

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 ere 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

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
  • Neva Carr Glynn as Oona
  • Grant Taylor as Horrie
  • Dinah Shearing
  • Frank Waters
  • Dorothy Whitely
  • Des Rolfe as Charlie
  • Patricia Connolly
  • Rodney Milgate
  • Diana Bell
  • Philippa Baker
  • Mary Mackay

Reception

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]

1960 Australian TV adaptation

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

Radio

Kenna adapted the play for radio in a version which broadcast in 1960 and 1961.[13]

1962 British TV adaptation
The Slaughter of St. Teresa's Day
Produced byJohn Jacobs
Written byPeter Kenna
StarringSusannah York
Release date
6 April 1962[14]
Running time
75 mins
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

The play was filmed by the BBC in 1962. 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
  • 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 as Charlie
  • Reg Lye as Barney

Radio

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

References
  1. Richard Waterhouse, 'Kenna, Peter Joseph (1930–1987)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/kenna-peter-joseph-12727/text22951, published first in hardcopy 2007, accessed online 3 April 2015.
  2. "It seems to me". The Australian Women's Weekly. 26 (42). 25 March 1959. p. 12. 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.
  4. Nicklin, Lenore (11 January 1975). "Sisters Gift Rescues a Writer". Sydney Morning Herald. p. 8.
  5. "Glasshouse for Actors in Warehouse". Sydney Morning Herald. 23 February 1959. p. 2.
  6. "Drama in Paddo revitalised". The Canberra Times. National Library of Australia. 23 September 1972. p. 12. Retrieved 3 April 2015.
  7. "New Trust project gives fresh scope to Australian talent". ABC Weekly. Vol. 21 no. 6. 11 February 1959. p. 4.
  8. Moses, John (8 March 1959). "Rough House at the Elizabethan". Sydney Morning Herald. p. 84.
  9. "Fun and Tears in Prize Play". Sydney Morning Herald. 12 March 1959. p. 5.
  10. "Slaughter of Sf. Teresa's Day:". Tribune (1094). New South Wales, Australia. 1 April 1959. p. 6. Retrieved 6 August 2020 – via National Library of Australia.
  11. "It seems to me". The Australian Women's Weekly. 26, (42). Australia, Australia. 25 March 1959. p. 12. Retrieved 6 August 2020 – via National Library of Australia.CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
  12. "SUNDRY SHOWS TALKIES THEATRE MUSIC ART Stage and Music". The Bulletin. Vol. 80 no. 4127. 18 March 1959. p. 24.
  13. "AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING COMMISSION 2CY 2CN". The Canberra Times. 35, (9, 810). Australian Capital Territory, Australia. 14 January 1961. p. 15. Retrieved 6 August 2020 – via National Library of Australia.CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
  14. Looking and Listening . . . Date: Friday, Apr. 6, 1962 Publication: Daily Mail p 18
  15. Purser, Philip (April 5, 1964). "Dawn of the New Drama?". Sunday Times. p. 13.
  16. Today's Broadcasting Programmes Date: Wednesday, Sept. 18, 1963 Publication: The Daily Telegraph p 18
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