Siding 273

Summary: BBC Television’s Sunday-Night Theatre production of Val Gielgud’s Siding 273. The production featured two of the actors from the 1948 stage production, Alan Tilvern and Seymour Green, in the same roles (Radio Times, 17 August 1956, p. 15).
Theatre play: Siding 273 by Val Gielgud [more information]
Play synopsis: Set in 1946, in a schoolroom in a small Austrian town on the border of the British and Russian Zones of Occupation, this play pits individual conscience against the rules of the military.
Production history: Written in New York in 1948, Val Gielgud’s play Siding 273 was first performed at the Embassy Theatre, London under the title Iron Curtain and directed by Anthony Hawtrey and Val Gielgud. The date of this stage performance is at the time of writing unknown, but it was performed at least once again before the 1956 BBC production, by the Allertonshire Players in April 1956 (http://www.communigate.co.uk/ne/allertonplayers/page8.phtml).
Date of transmission: Sunday 19 August 1956
Time: 8.15pm (90 mins)
Series: Sunday-Night Theatre
Channel: BBC Television
Production company: BBC

Producer

Val Gielgud

Playwright

Val Gielgud

Designer

Stephen Taylor

Assistant Producer

Terence Cook

Cast

Ernestine Costa	Adela Rubinstein
Seymour Green	Jean Ravaillac
Gerard Heinz	Dr Justinus van Galen
Sarah Lawson	Virginia Lawrence
Barry Letts	Captain George Graves
Jack May	David Gottlieb
Henry Oscar (1891-1969)	Political Commissar Sergei Karpoff
Stanley Platts	Colonel Ivan Roudenko
Jeffrey Segal	Corporal Albert Pym
Sebastian Shaw	Major Gerald Craven
Ronald Simpson	Brigadier Lambert
Alan Tilvern	Issachar Ben-Menahem (Judas)
Eileen Way	Jadwiga Konska
Valerie White	Betty Sanders

Play tags: Austria, as theme or setting; schools, as theme or setting; Second World War, as theme or setting

Title: Siding 273 (Audience Research Report)
Archive: BBC Written Archives Centre (WAC) [more information]
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Reference: Report reference VR/56/435, held in file R9/7/23

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