A Cheery Soul

Charles Blackman, Feet Beneath the Table (1956)

“But there has to be a chorus too.”

A Cheery Soul: A Comedy in Three Acts (1963)

Adapted from the short story A Cheery Soul (1962)

Plot (from STC program): In the suburb of Sarsaparilla in the late 1950s in the land of Menzies and God, Miss Docker lives a life of loud desperation. Singlehandedly she terrorises suburbia, an old folks home and the Church of England. Poor Miss Docker, poor sad, lonely, cheery old thing. When she’s made homeless by her own niece, in the Sydney suburb of Sarsaparilla, Mr & Mrs Custance take in this ‘soul of goodness’, onto to discover that she has the soul of a bulldozer. Next stop: the Sundown Home for Old People. After terrorising the residents, and the Reverend Wakeman, who dies from a forceful sermon directed entirely at Miss Docker regarding the “sin of militant virtue”, Miss Docker finds herself alone on a bare stage, making her way against the wind while everyone else enjoys their Sunday dinners.

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History: PW wrote this quickly in 1962 in the fever of joy from the successes of The Ham Funeral and The Season at Sarsaparilla. He had written it as a short story (which would be published) and then rushed off the adaptation for theatre. In his mind, PW had cast Nita Pannell as Miss Docker as soon as he wrote the first draft of the short story. The Adelaide Guild, which had staged his previous two plays, rejected it, but John Sumner took it on at the Union Theatre Rep (future Melbourne Theatre Company), where it opened in 1963. Opening Night was a disaster, and the box office crumbled – John Sumner recalled the show took houses as low as 20%.

The adaptation gives more time to the supporting characters while also rounding out Miss Docker’s origins and the motivations for her merciless attempts to do good. David Marr calls Miss Docker “the greatest monster of Australian theatre, and she’s a monster of good”. (Marr also notes that the Sarsaparillans ultimately give up caring for Miss Docker, which can lead to the ethical question of whether she has failed at earning their sympathy, or if they should have tried harder anyway; she’s still a human, after all.) He argues that Miss Docker’s impact is partly because she usually tells the truth, even if she tells too much of it. “Nothing is perhaps the truth”, as the play says late in the piece. In her final confrontation with the cattle dog, which rejects Miss Docker like everyone else, she is given the chance to have her Eye of the Storm moment and come to a moment of self-realisation. Instead, she chooses not to.

The failure of the première production was compounded by the reaction to PW’s next play, Night on Bald Mountain, leading the author to swear off theatre for 13 years. After the successful revival of The Season at Sarsaparilla in 1976, the new Sydney Theatre Company took a chance on A Cheery Soul, leading to the play’s first professional revival in 1979. PW’s new golden boy Jim Sharman directed, and Robyn Nevin took the lead role – a performance now regarded as one of the most iconic in Australian theatre history. Whereas the original production had leaned toward naturalism, Sharman took advantage of the play’s mixture of styles to produce something approaching an old-time revue. Notably he used adults to play children, rather than real children as had been done previously. The revival broke box-office records for the Drama Theatre, and helped usher in PW’s more successful theatrical decade of the 1980s.

Also premièred in 1963: Neil Simon, Barefoot in the Park; Joan Littlewood, Oh, What a Lovely War!; Peter Weiss, Marat/Sade; Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt, 110 in the Shade; Arthur Kopit, Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad: A Pseudoclassical Tragifarce in a Bastard French Tradition

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Major productions:

Union Theatre Repertory – Melbourne – 19 November – 14 December, 1963

dir: John Sumner, costumes and set: Desmond Digby

With Nita Pannell (Miss Docker), Elspeth Ballantyne (Maid/Baby Porteous), Jane Bertelson (Young Mrs Lillie/Mrs Furze), Dorothy Bradley (Miss Dando), Christine Calcutt (Mrs Anstruther), Moira Carleton (Mrs Hibble), Jane Casson (Mrs Tote), Simon Chilvers (Mr Furze), Sydney Conabere (Swaggie), Wyn Cunningham (Miss Perry), Paul Eddey (Mr Bleeker), Eric Hoek (Removal Man), Louise Homfrey (Mrs Watmuff), Helen Jacoby (Mrs Jebb), Brian James (Mr Wakeman), Gerda Nicholson (Mrs Wakeman), Bettina Smeaton (Matron/Mrs Pinford/Mrs Bleeker), and Doreen Warburton (Mrs Custance)

Article: Age 21/5/1963

Reviews:

• Geoffrey Hutton, “Bitter satire of A Cheery Soul”, The Age 20/11/1963
• Roger Covell, SMH, 20/11/1963:
  • “Faults notwithstanding, the play is illuminated by White’s characteristic humour and finely focused observation.”
• H.A. Standish, Melbourne Herald 20/11/1963
• Howard Palmer, Melbourne Sun 20/11/1963:
  • This review was just seven words: “A Cheery Soul is a sad play.”
• Sunday Telegraph 24/11/1953
• Avi-Ezer, “A Cheery Soul is not dreary”, Australian Jewish Herald, 29/11/1963
• Madeleine Armstrong, Bulletin 7/12/1963:
  • “Miss Docker has great vitality. Every sentence she utters gives an Australian audience a horrified and delighted shock of recognition…. [but] Patrick White’s satire on Miss Docker is conceived in pure hate and written with terrifying savagery… The trouble is that Miss Docker is presented in three dimensions in a pitiless and blinding light, while all the other characters are dimly seen in the soft radiance of the author’s tolerance… If Patrick White had been able to show these two kinds of “goodness” clashing with each other to reveal the weaknesses of both, then the play would have been genuine drama.”
• James Merralls, Sydney Nation 25/1/1964
• Keith Macartney, Meanjin 23.1 (March 1964)

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Sydney Theatre Company – Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, 17 January – 13 February 1979

Dir: Jim Sharman, designer: Brian Thomson, costumes: Anna Senior, composer: Cameron Allan

With Robyn Nevin (Miss Docker), Pat Bishop (Mrs Custance/Miss Ferry), Annie Byron (Mrs Wakeman/Mrs Watmuff), Sharon Calcraft (Pianist), Peter Carroll (Mr Custance/Mrs Jebb/Swaggie), Paul Chubb (Mrs Tole/Mr Bleeker), Claire Crowther (Mrs Hibble/Mrs Furze), Jan Hamilton (Miss Dando/Baby Porteous), Paul Johsntone (Tom Lillie/Mr Furze), Deborah Kennedy (Matron/Mrs Pinfold), John Paramor (Mr Wakmean), Linden Wilkinson (Violet Porteous) and Maggie Kirkpatrick (Mrs Lillie/Mr Lickiss/Mrs Bleeker)

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Rawcus Productions – ANU Arts Centre, Canberra: 29 March 1993

The 3^rd in a two-year project to stage readings of all of White’s plays. The project was conceived by Ralph Wilson, and this one-night only production directed by Cathy Mann.

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British Broadcasting Corporation – Filmed production – 27 April 1966

Adapted by Jonquil Antony, directed by Gilchrist Calder, with Hazel Hughes as Miss Docker. The script sets the story in the UK. Patrick White didn’t overly enjoy this.

Filmed for BBC’s The Wednesday Play.

(https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=12839045&S=1 for details)

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Royal Queensland Theatre Company – Brisbane – 4-20 June 1992

Dir: Neil Armfield, designer: Bill Haycock, composer: John Rodgers

With Carole Skinner (Miss Docker), Justine Anderson, Jennifer Blocksidge, Russell Kiefel, Anthony Phelan, Kate Stevenson

Reviewed:

• Courier Mail 5/6/1992
• Sunday Mail 7/6/1992
• The Australian 8/6/1992
• Bulletin 22/6/1992

Queensland Theatre Company and Adelaide Festival (QTC) – 25 Feb – 2 March 1994

The above production with Paul Bishop, Max Cullen, and Geoff Morrell joining the cast.

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Melbourne Theatre Company – Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne: 7 May – 1 June 1996

Dir: Neil Armfield, designer: Dale Ferguson, composer: John Rodgers

With Robyn Nevin (Miss Docker), and Julie Forsyth, Bob Hornery, Melita Jurisic, Monica Maughan, Judith McGrath, Margaret Mills

Reviewed:

• The Age 9/5/1996
• The Australian 10/5/1996
• The Herald Sun 16/5/1996
• The Bulletin 21/5/1996
• SMH 28/5/1996

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Sydney Theatre Company and Belvoir St Theatre – Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House: 30 December 2000 to 10 February 2001

Director: Neil Armfield, design: Dale Ferguson, composer: John Rodgers

With Robyn Nevin (Miss Docker) and Gillian Jones, Kris McQuade, Geoff Morrell, Lois Ramsey, and Kerry Walker

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Sydney Theatre Company – 5 Nov – 15 Dec 2018

Dir: Kip Williams, set: Elizabeth Gadsby, costume: Alice Babidge, composer: Clemence Williams

With Sarah Peirse (Miss Docker) and Emma Harvie, Anita Hegh, Brandon McClelland, Tara Morice, Monica Sayers, Nikki Shiels, Bruce Spence, Anthony Taufa

Reviewed:

Steve Dow, The Saturday Paper, 17-23 Nov 2018

Ian Dickson, Australian Book Review 407 (Dec 2018)

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