From The Listener December 2, 1972
A young man arrives at Wellington Airport. Customs officers are suspicious about him. While they interview him, something unexpected happens. The police are called in to find a retired schoolteacher called Mrs Amelia Oliver who is somehow connected with the young man. In the course of their inquires they investigate several deaths and missing bodies that appear to implicate the old lady.
These are the bare bones of An Awful Silence - the first thriller filmed in colour by the NZBC for domestic and overseas viewing. The hour-long play won the thriller section on last year's Ngaio Marsh television play contest. It was written by Vincent Ley.
For producer David Stevens the project was a demanding one. "An Awful Silence' is the first play we've done which must compete in every way with the best overseas productions such as The Avengers, he says
Finding the right locations for filming in Wellington was not easy. ‘' One of the key things is Mrs Oliver's old house. It had to lock exactly right. We spent weeks looking at every old house in Wellington and began to despair. And then we found a place that was marvellous, with all sorts of bizarre rooms. It's called Charnwood and it's about 100 years old.
The play was David Steven's swan song in New Zealand. After five years with radio and TV here, he has accepted a directing job with an Australian Film Company. His previous productions include Compass, the plays Genuine Plastic Marriage and Arthur K. Frump, Half a Fairy Tale, (a documentary on the Sheep Stealer McKenzie) and episodes of Pukemanu and Section 7.
He delayed his departure to produce An Awful Silence because he considers is a special piece of work "Of all the thrillers I read in the playwriting competition, it was the only one which seemed to me to work on its own terms. It has style, which is a rare thing to find in a thriller and is an incredibly hard thing to define. What I mean is that it is not ramshackle. It has a sense of humour and a bizarre plot. There is suspense not only in the base plot, but also in the peripheral things that happen.
"The play is a good and effective thriller which just happens to be set in New Zealand. If the public like to think of it this way rather looking to find the Great New Zealand Play, then I think they'll like it."
A total of 60 actors, a few professional but most amateur, make up the cast.
The lead role of Amelia Oliver is played by Wellington's Davina Whitehouse, who hasn't been in front of a camera for 30 years.
Davina come into my mind the moment I read the play." Says David Stevens. "I thought this is the part for her." She's a marvellous actress, a very funny person and a very wise woman."
Since taking small parts in over 30 films while in England in the 1930s, Mrs Whitehouse has established her New Zealand reputation in radio and stage drama.
Others featured are David Tinkham (Famous for his Wellington pantomime dames), Alan Jevis (Feltex Award winner for his title role in the The Killing of Kane) Hazel Cole, Susan Wilson and Michael Morrissey
Another man closely involved in An Awful Silence is Wellington composer Ian McDonald (Listener April 24). He has written a score which he describes as ranging in style from baroque to big band to avant-garde. "It's intended to do more than reinforce the emotions of the situations in the play," he says. "It includes transformations of an old revival theme called "Sweet By and Bay.' The hymn is actually played by a brass band and I take it up as a theme to elaborate on in various forms in different scenes"
The score is Ian McDonald's first venture into TV Drama but he had already established a solid reputation for radio and TV documentary work and music for radio plays
Monday December 4, 9.17pm
Auckland University Library holds a file containing two drafts of the play 'An Awful Silence', the Ngaio Marsh Television Thriller Playwriting Competition prize winning play, 1971. The first draft is that submitted in the competition, and the second is that as modified for filming by the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation. Also included is a letter, 22 Nov 1971, to Miss Olive Johnson, Acquisitions Librarian, Auckland University, concerning the donation of the play to the Library.
N.Z.B.C. production of "An Awful Silence”
The Press. 4 December 1972,
The N.Z.B.C.’s first essay into science fiction is an hour-long drama “An Awful Silence” which won the thriller category of the Ngaio Marsh playwriting competition run by the N.Z.B.C. in conjunction with Collins Crime Club. The Auckland author Vincent Ley describes it as “science fiction fantasy.” Shot entirely in colour (with the overseas market in mind) it combines spectacle, suspense and some highspeed action.
Probably because of New Zealand’s reputation as an outdoor race, people are inclined to think New Zealand’s climate is ideal for filming — especially in colour, to which the producer, David Stevens, replies, “Bosh!"
Constant changes in weather and therefore light made it extraordinarily difficult to keep to filming schedules and lights were used out-of-doors as a matter of course most of the time. Even steady bright sunshine brought problems in some garden sequences.
Cicadas already in residence decided to sing their hearts out for the microphones. They sound marvellous — so good that someone is almost bound to suggest the cicada “effects” were a trifle overdone!
"Perfect” house
Almost the most important “character” in “An Awful Silence” is “Chamwood” a bizarre, Edwardian - style house in Lower Hutt whose aspect and atmosphere are so odd that if it had been specially designed for the film it would probably have been rejected as a bit too eccentric.
Dot Dickson, production secretary, spotted “Chamwood” after the producer had looked at about 70 different houses all over Wellington. It was perfect and the crew moved in. And just to keep in character with the mood of “An Awful Silence” you won’t find “Chamwood” today if you go looking.
This was David Stevens’s (“Section 7,” “Half a Fairy Tale,” “Pukemanu,” “Genuine Plastic Marriage,” “Arthur K. Frupp’’) last N.Z.B.C. production before his departure for Melbourne where he is now film producer-director for Crawford Productions. His comment: “The cast and crew made a difficult job look easy.”
The author Vincent Ley’s “An Awful Silence" has at least two claims to distinction. It won the thriller section of the N.Z.8.C.-Collins Ngaio Marsh television play competition, and it was also his first completed manuscript of any kind.
Leading actress
Davina Whitehouse, who lead role, Mrs Oliver, commutes into Wellington from her home on the edge of a rocky beach....Of “An Awful Silence” she says that she has never seen an overseas crew work as hard as the N.Z.B.C. crew yet “David Stevens ran a happy crew and I left the channel at the end of the production with tears in my eyes.”
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