Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance [extract]

Summary

1966 Rediffusion production for ITV of extracts from Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance by John Arden, presented in the Take it from the Top series.

Theatre play

Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance by John Arden [more information]

Play synopsis

'Arden’s portrait of four Victorian deserters who turn up in a northern mining town to exact retribution for an act of colonial violence: one based on an incident in Cyprus in 1958, when British soldiers killed five innocent people in an anti-terrorist reprisal’ (Michael Billington, ‘Serjeant Musgrave rides again’, The Guardian, 23 September 2003.)

Production history

Premiere: Roayl Court Theatre, 1959.

Date of transmission

Monday 3 January 1966

Time

10.45-11.15pm

Series

Take It from the Top

Channel

ITV

Production company

Rediffusion (1964-68)

Credits

Director

Jane Howell

Producer

Geoffrey Hughes

Playwright

John Arden

Introduced by

John Fernald

Cast

John Castle	Private Hurst
Frances Cuka	Annie
Iain Cuthbertson	Serjeant Musgrave
Victor Henry	Private Sparky
Gillian Martell	Mrs Hitchcock
Ronald Pickup	Private Hurst
Sebastian Shaw	Private Attercliffe

Additional details

Extant status

No archival copy is known to exist.

Play tags

19th-century setting; Cyprus, as theme or setting; north of England, as theme or setting

Print sources

Title

TV Times, 29 December 1965 (Magazine)

Linking notes

listing, p. 31