The play would be filmed again by the ABC in 1967.[3]
Plot
In Tavazzano in May 1796, after the battle of Lodi, Napoleon meets a young Lady who he believes could be a spy, but to whom he is attracted.[4]
Cast
Edward Hepple as Napoleon
Felicity Young as the Lady
Stewart Weller as Guiseppe Grando
David Mitchell as the Lieutenant
Production
It was Hepple's first production in Melbourne though he had done numerous TV plays such as The Square Ring, The Little Woman and The Patriots.[1] While he made the production he rehearsed a Shaw play at the Union Theatre, Arms and the Man and The No Hoper. "I've never acted in a Shaw play before and here I am in two," said Hepple. "My greatest difficulty is the scarcity of books on Napoleon at this part of his life."[5]
Reception
The Sydney Morning Herald said director Muir "threw away much of the impact" of the central situation by casting Edward Hepple as Naploeon saying Heple "in many ways an excellent actor but he is better at portraying craftiness than common sense" and saying it was " an outwardly competent production that missed most of the special slang and flavour of Shaw's view of history."[6]
1967 Production
The play was re filmed by the ABC in 1967 as an episode of Love and War. That aired on 13 September 1967[7] (20 September 1967 in Brisbane).
It was filmed in Melbourne, Patrick Barton directed. Filmink said "l the way through watching this, I was wondering why the hell the ABC were making it – especially as they’d already filmed it four years previously. I mean, seriously, only four years – and it wasn’t very well known Shaw either."[3]
