The End Begins (1956)
The action takes place on a small island off the coast of Ireland. Time, the present.
| Production company/ies | Broadcast station(s) | Broadcast date(s) |
|---|---|---|
| BBC | BBC Television Service | May 17, 1956 (8.00pm) |
Production credits
| Producer(s) | Director(s) | Writer(s) | Other notable credits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hal Burton | Unknown | Ray Rigby | Designer: Hal Burton |
Acting credits
|
Synopsis
The Radio Times carried a short feature on the play:
To the small island off the coast of Ireland comes a Negro in American army uniform, a survivor of a boatload from the mainland. Soaked, exhausted, and distraught, he makes his way to the crofter's cottage which is the home of Hugh Pakenham, an Englishman who bought the island five years before and now shares its solitude with the only remaining locals, old Shaun O'Donnell and his wife. The Negro, Hank Christians, has a terrible tale to tell-of a sudden, appalling, cataclysmic Third World War in which 'Everybody just took their stock-piles up in the skies and dropped them. They all went crazy.' With the result that the civilised world has ceased to exist.
And now the other survivors from Hank's boat make their way to Pakenham's house - a little elderly doctor named Wincot, a middle-aged man named Jarrow, and a girl, Valerie. This ill-assorted handful of people must stay on the island, for the radio-active mainland is plague and famine-ridden, and here they must try to recreate the atmosphere of civilisation. Their numbers are soon increased by a trio of soldiers, and thus in the problems they have to face - problems civil and military, personal and racial - these atom-age Crusoes find themselves coping in their little world with the issues that beset civilisation, and striving not to make mistakes which will bring them also to catastrophe.
Notes
The End Begins is a play by English screenwriter Ray Rigby (1916 - May 19, 1995), written in collaboration with his wife Jean when working as a booking clerk at Victoria station. He submitted it to the BBC and they broadcast a production of the play on May 17, 1956. Unusually, the play was not given a repeat performance and no known telerecordings exist.
The play was later adapted for Australian television in 1961.
