Try for White

Summary: 1965 BBC production of Try for White by Basil Warner.
Theatre play: Try for White by Basil Warner [more information]
Play synopsis: 'It is high summer in Cape Town when Robert Matthews comes to visit his mother Jane, a dressmaker, who lives in one of the poorer suburbs. He is twenty-one now, and he has not been home for a long time. His mother’s hysterical, entrenched antipathy to the "drunken, thieving, no-goods" as she calls the Cape Coloureds who live around her, disturbs him. On the other hand, Robert finds he can get along admirably with her loud-mouthed, good-hearted bus-conductor lover Hockey. But this harmony is shattered when two women, one hostile, one ambiguous, enter the little circle. Their effect is one of utter disruption as one of the most insidious side-effects of apartheid is felt’ (Radio Times, 15 April 1965, p. 17).
Production history: Known to have been staged in the Hofmeyr Theatre, Cape Town, 17 June 1959, but possibly elsewhere earlier.
Date of transmission: Sunday 18 April 1965
Time: 8.15-9.40pm
Series: Theatre 625
Channel: BBC2
Production company: BBC

Director

Alan Gibson

Producer

Playwright

Composer

Conductor

Designer

Story Editor

James Brabazon (1923-2007)

Cast

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British Universities Film & Video Council