Waiting for Gillian

Summary

1954 live BBC studio production of Ronald Millar’s drama Waiting for Gillian, based on Nigel Balchin’s novel A Way Through the Wood.

Theatre play

Waiting for Gillian by Ronald Millar [more information]

Play synopsis

An adaptation of the novel A Way Through the Wood by Nigel Balchin. ‘Jill Manning is by her own admission a weak character, a woman who would have been called ‘frail’ in a former age. And the trouble from Jill’s point of view is that her husband, James, is so essentially a good and upright man, a J.P., and a man of strong principle, devoted to his wife, proud of their comfortable country house in the Home Counties. In short, he is an admirable husband: but is he admirable for Jill? Can he, for instance, make her laugh as can their neighbour, the Hon. William Bule, who is a self-confessed cad but makes Jill feel at ease in a way that James cannot? Is the man of many principles better for her than the man of few? Perhaps the question need never have taken such direct form, but unexpectedly there is question of an accident involving dangerous driving, and a fast car that does not stop, and a victim who is brother-in-law of a relentless local constable’ (Peter Forster, Radio Times, 12 November 1954, p. 12).

Production history

Presented at the St James’s Theatre, London, in 1954, by Laurence Olivier Productions Ltd.

Date of transmission

Sunday 14 November 1954

Time

8.30-10.00pm

Channel

BBC Television

Production company

BBC

Credits

Producer

Alvin Rakoff

Playwright

Ronald Millar

Original Book by

Nigel Balchin (titled ‘A Way Through the Wood’)

Designer

Lawrence [Laurence] Broadhouse

Cast

Patrick Barr	James Manning
Kathleen Boutall	Flo
Jefferson Clifford	Dr Barry Frewen
Anne Crawford	Jill Manning
Michael Denison	Hon. William Stephen Fitzharding Bule
Rosemary Frankau	Nurse
Thomas Heathcote	P. C. Cater
Norman Pierce	Sergeant Groves
Victor Platt	Joe Pearce
Kit Terrington	Billy
Anna Turner	Elsie Pearce

Additional details

Origination

Live from studio

Vision original

Monochrome

Later transmissions

Presented again at 9.30pm on Thursday 18 November 1954.

Extant status

No archival copy is known to exist.

Play tags

adaptation of novel

Print sources

Title

Radio Times, 12 November 1954 (Magazine)

Linking notes

lisitng, photograph and caption, p. 12