The Dance Dress

Summary

1955 live BBC studio production of Michael Voysey’s crime drama The Dance Dress.

Theatre play

The Dance Dress by Michael Voysey [more information]

Play synopsis

'Michael Voysey’s new play has a simple plot: boy meets girl, girl wants dance dress, boy kills old woman to get it, boy gets caught’ (Anthony Hartley, The Spectator, 27 November 1953, p. 12).

Production history

First presented at the Embassy Theatre, London, in November 1953.

Date of transmission

Tuesday 21 June 1955

Time

9.15-10.15pm

Channel

BBC Television

Production company

BBC

Credits

Producer

Chloe Gibson

Playwright

Michael Voysey

Music

Tom McCall

Designer

John Cooper

Cast

Madge Brindley
Edward Brooks
Shirley Eaton	Fay
Kenneth Haigh	Rickie
Molly Osborne	Marlene
Liddell Peddieson

Additional details

Origination

Live from studio

Vision original

Monochrome

Extant status

No archival copy is known to exist.

Play tags

crime

Print sources

Title

Family Portrait (Magazine review)

Author/creator

Ivor Brown (Author)

Reference

The Listener, 30 June 1955, p. 1171

Notes

''The concluding scenes [of The Dance Dress] had to stand up to one of the incidental risks of television, a "technical hitch", at the very crisis of the play... The players in this case countered the break in their performance - at its moment of highest urgency - with courage and success.' Includes a photograph of the production.

Title

Radio Times, 17 June 1953 (Magazine)

Linking notes

listing, p. 24