Night on Bald Mountain

NIGHT ON BALD MOUNTAIN (1964)

Margaret Preston, I lived at Berowra (1941)

“But sometimes I suspect God only helps the strong.”

Plot: Professor Hugo Sword and his wife Miriam are holed up at a mountain retreat. He’s an ascetic professor who writes erotic fiction. She’s an alcoholic wife who has attempted to find meaning through the bottle. Hugo is pursued by Miriam’s young nurse, Miss Stella Summerhayes, who had hoped to find purpose in this role but has instead found only confusion. Confrontations lead to revelation and horror. All of this is compounded by the outsider perspective of Miss Quodling, an eccentric woman from a society background who herds her goats through the mountains.

Editions: First published in Four Plays, aka Collected Plays, Vol. 1 (E&S, Viking, Sun Books, Currency). First published as a stand-alone play by Currency Press in conjunction with State Theatre Company of South Australia in 1996.

History: PW wrote the play in late 1962 during his theatrical burst that also included The Season at Sarsaparilla and A Cheery Soul. He wrote it for his preferred director at the time, Jim Tasker, with ideally Michael Redgrave in the lead role. “If it comes off”, PW said, “it will be the first Australian tragedy”. PW sold a West End option for the play but this subsequently lapsed.

PW offered the play to his usual company, the University of Adelaide Guild. The show met with tension during the funding stage in late 1963, due to a standoff between the Adelaide Festival and the University Guild, both of whom wanted it (a clear change from 1961, when PW struggled to get his plays staged anywhere). The standoff resulted in a frustrating situation: the Guild made it too hard for the Festival to be involved, so the Festival used its leverage to stop the Guild getting external funding. The Guild was forced to pay for the play’s entire £4,500 budget from its own coffers. Reviewers noted that Night on Bald Mountain felt like a “fringe” element of the Festival, since it wasn’t officially sanctioned by them when it opened in March 1964, yet most reviewers opened their Festival reviews by discussing it. A mere three years after being unwanted by the establishment, PW’s plays were now the major drawcard for many theatre literati.

By now, PW’s theatre career was the stuff of media legend (even if his shows only had small runs) and the box office did reasonably well. Yet critics were divided. Many were fiercely negative, especially Robert Hughes and the usually supportive Harry Kippax, who wrote a review in the Nation titled “Patrick White’s Mistake”. The negative reaction had an immediate effect, in that Bald Mountain was not seen again in Australia until 1996. (Reportedly there was a single production in Hildesheim, Germany, at some point.) Late in his life, PW was asked by Neil Armfield whether the play should be revived; PW responded; “No. It’s a dishonest play”. More long-term, however, it poisoned PW against the idea of the theatre. He would not have another professional production in Australia until The Season at Sarsaparilla was revived in 1976, and would not think about writing a play again until that time either.

Notes: The play’s dialogue and character interactions are more naturalistic than those which came before, although symbolism and expressionism still loom large in the overall effect. The general critical view holds that the play has merit in its themes and ideas, but not necessarily as a piece of theatre. May Brit-Akerholt notes that it is a play about society vs. the individual, a theme that resonates through almost all of PW’s work.

The play toys with ideas we see elsewhere in the canon: the class-consciousness of the marriage (Hugo married down, and it still stings); the naïve character serving as audience surrogate (previously Roy and the Young Man, here Denis, Hugo’s junior colleague); the typical suburban Sarsaparillan, here the housekeeper who avoids mental challenge by only engaging with the tangible parts of life; and of course the cyclical nature of events, which we saw in The Season at Sarsaparilla and is here exemplified by the way life returns to an almost status quo after the horrors of play’s end.

Unsurprisingly, Miss Quodling has been the subject of much of the critical discussion. The other characters seem trapped in cycles, trying to get out, to the point of death. Indeed, Miss Quodling’s favourite goat, Dolores, jumps to its death – almost in a parody of Stella’s ultimate death – so determined to go free it will die for it. But the goat-keeper herself has accepted she cannot control things. R.F. Brissenden writes perceptively: “Miss Quodling, the Sibylline goat woman, speaks with a quintessentially Australian accent; her idiom is tough, slangy, humours, sardonically realistic and amazingly fluent and flexible. It is the range which surprises and delights: in her speeches PW has enlarged the dimensions of the Australian language in a unique and creative way, revealing unsuspected potentialities for poetry and eloquence.”

Also premièred in 1964: Frank D. Gilroy, The Subject Was Roses; Peter Shaffer, The Royal Hunt of the Sun; Frank Marcus, The Killing of Sister George; Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, Fiddler on the Roof; Joe Orton, Entertaining Mr Sloane

University of Adelaide Theatre Guild – Union Hall, Adelaide – 9-26 March 1964

Dir: John Tasker, composer: Jerry Wesley-Smith, set design: Wendy Dickson

With Nita Pannell (Miss Quodling), Joan Bruce (Miriam), Alexander Archdale (Hugo), Barbara West (Stella), Robert Leach (Denis) with Myra Noblett, Laurie Davies, Don Barker

Geoffrey Dutton and Max Harris wrote the note on the author for the original program.

Reviews:

  • Pat Griffith, “Bald Mountain is stageworthy”, Adelaide Advertiser, 10/3/1964
  • H.A. Standish, Melbourne Herald 10/3/1964
  • Martin Long, Daily Telegraph 11/3/1964
    • “A passionate and skilful contribution to the small but growing stock of Australian drama”
  • Roger Covell, SMH 11/3/1964:
    • Positive review for Alexander Archdale and Nita Pannell, but expresses concerns that the cast were under-directed and not everyone was able to live up to their parts, including Joan Bruce. “Denied more than ‘fringe’ status at the festival… this flawed, in places clumsily constructed, but in many ways admirable piece of theatre seems likely to outstay in the memory most of the more superficially appealing events of the festival.”
  • Howard Palmer, Sun 11/3/1964
  • Geoffrey Hutton, Age 14/3/1964
  • Harry Kippax, “Patrick White’s Mistake”, Nation, 21/3/1964
  • Madeleine Armstrong, “The professor’s tragedy: Patrick White and the miseries of sex”, Bulletin, 28/3/1964:
    • “I found it impossible to really believe in, or be moved by, the events involving [Hugo and Miriam]… Miss Quodling is so much more real than the other characters. It is the poetry of her life amid rocks, goats and silence that gives the play depth and, in spite of the melodramatic events, serenity.”
  • Geoffrey Dutton, Nation, 4/4/1964 (a response to Kippax?)
  • Robert Hughes, “Getting the goat”, London Magazine 4.2 (May 1964)

Rawcus Productions – Street Theatre, Canberra: 23 May 1994

The 7th 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 David Atfield. 

State Theatre Company of South Australia in conjunction with Belvoir Street Theatre:

Playhouse, Adelaide 8-29 June 1996, Belvoir Theatre, Sydney 5-28 July

Director: Neil Armfield, designer: Anna Borghesi, costumes: Tess Schofield, composer: Carl Vine

Cast: Gillian Jones (Stella), Barry Otto (Hugo), Essie Davis (Miriam), Carole Skinner (Miss Quodling) with Ralph Cotterill, Keith Robinson, Steve Rodgers

Reviews:

  • The Advertiser 10/6/1996
  • Peter Ward, “No Human Grandeur in White’s Bleak Night”, The Australian, 11/6/1996
  • The Financial Review 14/6/1996
  • The Bulletin 25/6/1996
  • Murray Bramwell, “Long Day’s Journey into White”, Adelaide Review (July 1996)
  • David Marr, SMH, 9/7/1996
  • Sun Herald 7/7/1996 |
  • Daily Telegraph 12/7/1996
  • The Australian 22/7/1996

Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne – 5-25 May 2014

Dir: Matthew Lutton, set and costumes: Dale Ferguson, music: Ida Duelund Hansen

Cast: Melitia Jurisic (Miriam), Nikki Shiels (Stella), Peter Carroll (Hugo), Luke Mullins (Denis), Julie Forsyth (Miss Quodling) with Syd Brisbane, Ida Duelund Hansen, Sue Jones

Previous play: A Cheery Soul

Next play: Big Toys

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