The Beast in View (play)
| The Beast in View | |
|---|---|
| Written by | John Hepworth |
| Characters |
|
| Date premiered | November 1959 |
| Place premiered | Union Hall, Adelaide |
| Original language | English |
| Genre | drama |
| Setting | boarding house in Kings Cross, Sydney |
The Beast in View is a 1959 Australian stage play by John Hepworth.[1][2]
The play came second in a competition to select an Australian play for the first Adelaide Festival of Arts, but was rejected for production (as had the play that won the competition, The One Day of the Year). Writer Max Harris claimed this was because the play was "sexy, uncouth and alcoholic."[3]
The University of Adelaide Theatre Guild then staged it in a censored version.[4][5]
A copy of the play is at the Fryer Library at the University of Queensland.[6]
Premise
The play is set in a boarding house in Kings Cross. Elli, the landlady, is twice divorced and feels no longer attractive. Her boarders are Pren, a war veteran and journalist sleeping with Elli; Hal, a law student; Honest, an old music hall comedian; and Bodge/Joey the Slaughter, who works in a slaughter house, and who is desired by Elli. Bodge invites eighteen year old Kathie to stay at Elli's. Bodge then murders Kathie.
Reception
The play was presented at the Arts Theatre, Melbourne in 1961. Reviewing this, The Bulletin said "Mr Hepworth has a remarkable flair for writing realistic dialogue, and he has chosen a situation which has very strong dramatic possibilities. As a result he does manage to keep the audience waiting, more or less patiently, to see what will happen in the end." However the reviewer felt "The play is in fact completely incoherent. I think the trouble is that Mr Hepworth was so busy trying to reproduce the surface of life, which' he does well, that he forgot about making an artistic whole."[7]
The Age called it an "uneven play" but said it "had a certain vigor, an eye for character and a feeling for the spoken idiom."[8]
The play was presented in Sydney in 1962 at the Pocket Playhouse. The Sydney Morning Herald criticised the play's "numbing badness."[9]
References
- ^ Kippax, H. G. (1964). Australian Drama since “Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.” Meanjin Quarterly, 23(3), 229–242. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.971442310074885
- ^ Parr, Bruce (April 2005). "The misfit male body in Adelaide theatre, 1959". Australasian Drama Studies. No. 46. p. 20-37.
- ^ Harris, Max (19 December 1959). "Pleasures of the hunt". The Nation. p. 18.
- ^ "Men at Play: Masculinities in Australian Theatre since the 1950s". Jonathan Bollen.
- ^ Parr p 20
- ^ The Beast in View at Fryer Library
- ^ "Any Man Might", The Bulletin, 82 (4262), 21 Oct 1961, ISSN 0007-4039, nla.obj-696000138, retrieved 8 January 2024 – via Trove
- ^ Hutton, Geoffrey (12 October 1961). "Latest Australian play has vigour". The Age. p. 5.
- ^ "Local theme at pocket". The Sydney Morning Herald. 11 May 1962. p. 7.
External links
- The Beast in View at Ausstage
- The Beast in View at AustLit