Rusty Bugles

Production history

It was first produced by Doris Fitton and Sydney's Independent Theatre company on 14 October 1948, and advertised as an "army comedy documentary". The announcement of its ban was made by J. M. Baddeley, Chief Secretary and acting Premier of New South Wales, on 22 October but after initially defying the ban, Doris Fitton avoided a forced closure by commissioning a rewrite from the author.

The Independent Theatre took the play, after an unprecedented 20-week run in New South Wales, to reopen The King's Theatre, Melbourne. Meanwhile, another company was playing "Rusty Bugles" at Killara, New South Wales, so it was the first Australian play to run simultaneously in two states. The words that were the subject of the ban gradually reappeared; no legal action was ever taken, though rewrites were demanded in different states.

At the end of its record six-month run in Melbourne, the production transferred to Adelaide, then returned to Sydney at The Tatler. But now critics were writing that it was being played for laughs, with the swearing self-conscious rather than part of the patois.

The publisher of the play, Currency Press, quotes Elliott as saying that Rusty Bugles was 'a documentary... Not strictly a play... it has no plot in the accepted sense'. Elliott did not foresee that shortly after this, the genre of the theatre of the absurd would be established as a 'legitimate' dramatic form where plot and the delineation of character are less important than the insight offered into the implicit drama of most human interactions.

Cast (1948)

Adaptations

The play was adapted for TV by the ABC in 1965 and then later in 1981. Both versions were directed by Alan Burke who had directed the stage play in 1949.

The play was also adapted by the ABC for radio in 1965.

1965 film

The play was adapted for the ABC's Wednesday Theatre in 1965.

It was Alan Burke's first production for the ABC since he returned from England.

Cast

The cast of the 1965 film was:

Reception

The critic for The Sydney Morning Herald thought the adaptation blundered by not establishing where and when the play was set, saying the director "wasted speculation while a huge cast of strange characters passed before him — too many, in fact, to be accommodated comfortably in such short playing lime." He also felt the word "flamin' " was overused.

Another reviewer noted the high use of the word "flamin" ("it got a flamin' good workout") while "the other word, which the wowsers took such exception to when the play was first staged in Sydney some 15 years ago, hardly got a look-in." However he thought "Alan Burke's production was a good, smooth job" and did "draw the pathos from the story."

1981 film

Sumner Locke Elliot announced in the late 1970s he wanted the play to be filmed.

The ABC filmed it in 1981. Alan Burke was again associated as producer.

Cast

Reception

The critic from the Woman's Weekly complained about the "quaint, old-fashioned dialogue" and "some quaint, old-fashioned direction" in which "the viewer was never certain he was watching a photographed stage play or a badly re-enacted documentary... A study of bordeom , became studiously boring."

The Canberra Times called the 1981 production "the sort of entertainment that makes satire redundant."