It was filmed by the ABC and directed by Alan Burke on 23 March 1960 at a time when local drama production was rare.
[2] Oola Maguire is throwing a St. Theresa's Day Party for her clients and friends, along with her right "hand" Essie Farrell.
According to Filmink the original play "was naturalistic, road-tested, critically approved, offered showy roles and all took place in one location.
"[6] Director Alan Burke had worked at the Elizabethan Theatre Trust, who presented the original production of the play.
The Australian Woman's Weekly called it " one of the best bits of live TV I have seen... Alma Butterfield as Aunt Essie stole the acting honors.
She was splendid, such a real character — everyone's elderly aunt, the one that lives with the family and smoothes things out for them.
"[11] The critic for the Sydney Morning Herald thought the play "lost little of its waywardness and some of its liveliness in a television production" and had faults with the play ("Kenna seems unable to settle decisively on one theme and to develop it boldly enough to carry his admirable intentions and considerable ability") but felt it was a "very worthwhile production, organised with some tact and imagination by Alan Burke.
It very much comes across like televised theatre; Alan Burke was skilled at blocking and handling his cast, but had some way to go before mastering the art of the close up.
Oola Maguire’s blustering, laughing, sentimental bookie, cackling away with Essie, brilliantly brings to life a segment of society in my grandparents’ generation, with their garish side tables, pictures of saints, transistor radios and men with moustaches; it’s the time of SP bookies, and sing-a-longs around the piano, of prostitutes, sly grog, and schools run by nuns.
It’s there in hundreds of little details: the way Walter Sullivan’s Horrie cleans his fingernails with a dagger, or how Essie answers the phone, or Oola’s reading glasses, or Wilma’s anxious dancing, or how the men hold their cigarettes and drink beer and swagger and say “right oh”.