The revival of the Anzac play the censors wouldnt let us see 60 years ago – Sydney Morning Herald

As a boy in Sydney, I remembered Anzac reunions (as) emotional, excited days when old soldiers gathered together and drank far into the night. They lived in the past for one drunken day when they got together, the past was all they had in common.

Yeldham had originally pitched his play to the ABC, but it had been rejected.

So he revived it when the BBC came calling. Sadly, the BBCs recording has been erased.

It featured a wealth of Australian and New Zealand expatriate acting talent - including Ray Barrett, Ron Haddrick and Nyree Dawn Porter.

Betty Best, of the Australian Womens Weekly, described how one of the BBCs studios in fog-blanketed Manchester had been converted into a private bar in a Sydney hotel, a North Shore home with a sun patio, a fibro bungalow and a bachelor flat.

Reunion Day, 1962 BBC production, starring Ron Haddrick and Nyree Dawn Porter.

The BBCs recording was due to be shown in Australia on the eve of Anzac Day 1962 in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

Then calamity struck. Australian censors, under the government of Australias longest-serving prime minister, Robert Menzies, insisted on drastic cuts to both the characters and the language.

Chief censor CJ Campbell ruled the language used may be all right for a soldiers reunion but it is all wrong for a suburban sitting room.

Frank Packer (father of Kerry, grandfather of James) agreed, according to Yeldhams autobiography: He refused to show it on his network because he decided it offended the RSL.

The original BBC cast of Reunion Day in 1962, including Nyree Dawn Porter, Ray Barrett and Ron Haddrick plus author Peter Yeldham.

An unnamed Packer executive told the TV Times: Reunion Day depicts Anzac Day as just another excuse for a debauch. The action takes place almost entirely in a pub. The language goes from bad to worse.

Every two or three minutes someone says, lets have a drink. The whole thing (is) blasphemous, obscene and thoroughly nasty.

If we had shown it we would have had the RSL marching on us, not without justice.

Haddrick, who had performed for five seasons at Britains Royal Shakespeare Theatre alongside the likes of Laurence Olivier before returning to Australia, was shocked and upset when Reunion Day was banned: There are only three bloodys in it!

Reunion Day might have remained forgotten, but in 2008, literary critic and former academic Susan Lever published a paper honouring the forgotten play as an important part of our cultural history.

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She will host a discussion about the plays relevance after the read-through. Writer and historian Stephen Vagg, prime mover behind this reading, saw Levers article and says: The ban was absurd, even at the time. Australian officials were simply oversensitive at the plays honest depiction of the issues faced by returned servicemen.

The read-through features Brandon Burke and Ruth Caro among a host of well-known faces and is directed by Denny Lawrence who says the issues faced by returned servicemen from Iraq and Afghanistan are not far removed from those of the returned servicemen in Reunion Day.

Reunion Day: A Reading. AFTRS, Entertainment Quarter, Sydney, June 26, 2pm, reunionday.eventbrite.com.au

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The revival of the Anzac play the censors wouldnt let us see 60 years ago - Sydney Morning Herald