Dark Enchantment

{{Infobox play

| name = Dark Enchantment

| orig_title =

| image = File:Dark_Enchantment_Two.png

| alt =

| caption = Daily Mirror 15 July 1949

| writer = Max Afford

| based_on = {{based on|Sleep No More|Max Afford}}

| director = Fifi Banvard

| chorus =

| characters =

| mute =

| setting =

| premiere = {{Start date|1949|06|27}}

| place = Minerva Theatre, Sydney

| orig_lang = English

| series =

| subject =

| genre = thriller

| web =

}}

Dark Enchantment is a 1949 Australian play by Max Afford.

It was based on a 1943 play by Afford called Sleep No More

Premise

Set in a London theatrical boarding house in 1895. A young girl, Julie, whose mother runs the house, receives an inheritance from a foreign ventriloquist, Kurtner: his doll, £1,000, and an accompanying "dark enchantment".

Production history

Dark Enchantment premiered at the Minerva Theatre in Kings Cross Sydney in 1949.{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article18120665 |title=First Night For A New Thriller. |newspaper=The Sydney Morning Herald |date=28 June 1949 |accessdate=24 May 2015 |page=6 |publisher=National Library of Australia}}{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article130196915 |title=Australian Play 'Needs Overhaul'. |newspaper=The News |location=Adelaide |date=28 June 1949 |accessdate=24 May 2015 |page=15 |publisher=National Library of Australia}}

Afford's wife, Thelma, designed costumes for that production.{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article28666195 |title=Husband Wrote The Play; Wife Designed The Clothes |newspaper=The Sunday Herald (Sydney) |issue=22 |location=New South Wales, Australia |date=19 June 1949 |accessdate=20 July 2023 |page=10 |via=National Library of Australia}} The cast included Neva Carr Glynn and Grant Taylor.

Reception

File:Dark_Enchantment.png

Reviews were mixed. The Daily Telegraph said the play "left most of its thrills to explanatory— and trite — dialogue."{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article248247182 |title="Thriller" disappoints |newspaper=The Daily Telegraph |volume=XIV |issue=84 |location=New South Wales, Australia |date=28 June 1949 |accessdate=20 July 2023 |page=10 |via=National Library of Australia}}

The Sydney Morning Herald said Afford "proves his ability to lease with suspense and to administer shocks of horror. He can tell a story with macabre inventiveness and ingenious twists... The weakness of Max Afford's play fies in much of the dialogue, which is in parts trite, and in other parts... not true to character... If his inventiveness in action, which achieves a master stroke in the approach of whistling outside the window at the end of the last act, could be paralleled by originality in character creation, he might make of this thriller a play of distinction and roundness comparable with nhe work, in the crime department, of Dorothy Sayers."{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article18120665 |title=First Night For A New Thriller |newspaper=The Sydney Morning Herald |issue=34,794 |location=New South Wales, Australia |date=28 June 1949 |accessdate=20 July 2023 |page=6 |via=National Library of Australia}}

Smith's Weekly said "Mr. A.'s thriller calls for certain long periods of suffering on the part of the spectators. These bouts, which rather resemble rigor mortis, set in at the beginnings of acts 1, 2, and 3, endure for great lengths of time, and cease abruptly some ten minutes before each curtain — when "Mr. A. springs his spooky little act-endings in time to arouse you for the intervals."{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article235977046 |title=Through Smith's Private Projector |newspaper=Smith's Weekly |volume=XXXI |issue=19 |location=New South Wales, Australia |date=9 July 1949 |accessdate=20 July 2023 |page=19 |via=National Library of Australia}}{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article261688548 |title=On Sydney Stages Minerva |newspaper=The Sydney Jewish News |volume=X |issue=42 |location=New South Wales, Australia |date=15 July 1949 |accessdate=20 July 2023 |page=10 |via=National Library of Australia}}

Variety said the play "has little chance abroad. Needs plenty of re-write to smooth it out for even local consumption... Action is slow. and never builds."{{cite magazine|url=https://archive.org/details/variety175-1949-07/page/n281/mode/1up?q=%22max+afford%22|title=Dark Echantment|magazine=Variety|date=27 July 1949|page=114}}

The play later toured English provinces starring Ellen Pollock and Ernest Milton.{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article42710418 |title=Visiting Novelists Help State. |newspaper=The Cairns Post |location=Qld. |date=7 November 1951 |accessdate=24 May 2015 |page=5 |publisher=National Library of Australia}} Afford went to England to be involved in its production.{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article18477174 |title=Small Talk... |newspaper=The Sunday Herald (Sydney) |issue=61 |location=New South Wales, Australia |date=26 March 1950 |accessdate=20 July 2023 |page=13 |via=National Library of Australia}} The play did not transfer to the West End but had two different runs in 1950.{{cite news|title=And right one|newspaper=he Sydney Morning Herald|date=31 July 1950|page=24}}

Original cast

Neva Carr Glyn
Betty Duncan
Gordon Glenwright
Richard Parry
Georgie Sterling
Grant Taylor
Maurice Unicomb
Daphne Winslow
Charles Zoli

Adaptations

Dark Enchantment was adapted for radio on the ABC in 1960. The adaptation was by Joy Hollyer.{{Cite web|url=http://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/event/98571|title = AusStage}}{{cite news|title=On the radio|newspaper=The Age|date=4 August 1960|page= 26}}

''Sleep No More''

{{Infobox play

| name = Sleep No More

| orig_title =

| image =

| alt =

| caption =

| writer = Max Afford

| based_on =

| director = Leonard Bullen

| music =

| lyrics =

| choreography =

| chorus =

| characters =

| mute =

| setting =

| premiere = 18 June 1943{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article17852319 |title=Advertising |newspaper=The Sydney Morning Herald |issue=32,905 |location=New South Wales, Australia |date=12 June 1943 |accessdate=26 August 2023 |page=2 |via=National Library of Australia}}

| place = Independent Theatre, Sydney

| orig_lang = English

| series =

| subject =

| genre = suspense

| web =

}}

The play appears to be based on Sleep No More, an earlier play of Afford's .{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article17854170 |title=MUSIC AND DRAMA |newspaper=The Sydney Morning Herald |issue=32,917 |location=New South Wales, Australia |date=26 June 1943 |accessdate=26 August 2023 |page=6 |via=National Library of Australia}} This play was set in a London boarding-house for theatrical types; a Rumanian ventriloquist, a student of Black Magic, bequeaths his doll to his wife, there are accidents and the wife suspects the doll is responsible.

The play was given a reading at the Independent Theatre in 1940.{{Citation

| author1=Australasian Radio Relay League.

| title=PLAYWRIGHTS OF AUSTRALIA. LEADING RADIO DRAMATIST

| journal=The Wireless Weekly: The Hundred per Cent Australian Radio Journal

| orig-date=

| department=v. ; 24-38 cm.

| volume=35

| issue=39

| date=September 28, 1940

| location=Sydney

| publisher=Wireless Press

| url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-720714449

| id=nla.obj-720714449

| access-date=26 August 2023

| via=Trove

}} However it was not produced until 1943. The Sydney Morning Herald said it "lacks a good deal of the dramatic action of the playwright's earlier thriller, Lady in Danger."{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article17853359 |title=INDEPENDENTS NEW PLAY |newspaper=The Sydney Morning Herald |issue=32,911 |location=New South Wales, Australia |date=19 June 1943 |accessdate=26 August 2023 |page=11 |via=National Library of Australia}} The Bulletin said the play "lacks most things necessary in a stage thriller, including the thrills. The first act is hopeful; the other two haven’t even hope. All the characters come straight out of stock.... If Afford turned his energy to the Australian scene he’d probably find that his characters and plots would come to life with the background."{{Citation

| title=Sundry Shows.

| journal=The Bulletin

| orig-date=1880

| department=105 volumes : illustrations (chiefly coloured), portraits (chiefly coloured) ; 30-40 cm.

| issn=0007-4039

| series=John Ryan Comic Collection (Specific issues).

| volume=64

| issue=3307

| date=30 Jun 1943

| location=Sydney, N.S.W

| publisher=John Haynes and J.F. Archibald

| url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-538113197