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Night on Bald Mountain

Playwright: White, Patrick
Year: 1964
Type: Play
Edition: Adelaide University Theatre Guild, 1964. Eyre & Spottiswoode Ltd, 1965

Synopsis

Stella, a young, fresh and optimistic nurse arrives on Bald Mountain to care for Miriam Sword, the wife of the scholarly and imposing Professor Sword. The community of Bald Mountain includes Miss Quodling,a goatkeeper who has left Sydney for mountain isolation, Denis Craig, a young lecturer and friend of the Professor, and Mrs Sibley, the Sword's discontented housekeeper. Over the course of 24 hours, the lives of the Swords, Stella, and the small Bald Mountain community unravel in this gothic tale of isolation and repression. 

Banned in his own lifetime by the author himself, Night on Bald Mountain returned to the stage in 1996. This poetic thriller, written in the shadow of the atomic bomb, explores the heart and intellect in a study of misplaced love and desire. 

Narrative Locations

Mrs Quodling's shack and goatyards, Bald Mountain, Blue Mountains region, New South Wales  

Temporal setting: 1964

Location notes:

Night on Bald Mountain begins and ends at Mrs Quodling's goatyards and shack. The building is intended to be small and simple, with the outdoor elements of the goats and the mountain itself the focus, rather than the shack. In this isolated retreat Mrs Quodling has made for herself and her goats, the members of the Sword household begin and conclude the tragic 24 hour period of the drama. Here, full force of the mountain as a character in the play is displayed. Mrs Quodling speaks of the mountain with tenderness and respect, but invokes the necessity of showing caution and fear. 

The fictional Bald Mountain is located on the outskirts of Sydney, far enough away for a strong sense of isolation to pervade the play, but near enough that the 'rhinestone' lights of the city can be seen. Coordinates have been given for the Blue Mountains on the outskirts of Sydney. 

Director of Sydney's Malthouse Theatre production of Night on Bald Mountain in 2014 discussed how "the mountain itself is a massive force in the play. Most of the characters either honestly express that they cannot understand it, or arrogantly express that they know what nature is. It humbles people and in this play it's very violent, very harsh". (http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/theatre/new-light-cast-on-patrick-whites-night-on-bald-mountain-20140423-3748m.html)

Quotes

The shack is of untreated slab. One chimney. Behind the shack an ancient apple tree in flower. A rudimentary front veranda, one or two steps to ground...Through the back gate MISS QUODLING lets out her does to browse on the mountainside.... A staggy old gumtree rises out of, or at back of, the yard. Between the shack and the yard there is a view: a suggestion of vastness- rock colours at the ground, thinning out into greys and blues. 

(p. Act 1, Scene 1, page 269)


MISS QUODLING: (speaking very gently, both to soothe her companion and because she is expressing her private thoughts) When I came 'ere in the beginnin' I was afraid. Wouldn't of admitted it, of course...not to anyone on earth...

(Dreamlike picture as the two women drift slowly across the scene.).... but I was. I'd run away from... life, I s'pose. And here I stood. (They halt) On this very spot. It was just as if I was the first person born into an empty world. It was huge, and lonely, and I had to get used to...

(MIRIAM nods. Sad, dreamy.)

Then it seemed to get used ter me. I was born. Look! (Makes a gesture with her arm) You can feel  the light when it first begins. Can't you feel it's touch? Eh? Soft...

(p. Act 3, Scene 3, page 348)



Sword's House, Bald Mountain, Blue Mountains region, New South Wales  

Temporal setting: 1964

Location notes:

The Sword's home on Bald Mountain is the central setting of the play, both structurally and symbolically. The play begins and ends in the exterior world of the bush and goatyards, however the core of the action takes place in the interior of the Sword residence, and it is the interior world with which the play is most occupied.

The set design for the Sword residence is intended to allow the audience to see into multiple rooms of the home simutaneously. Reflecting on the set design in the original 1964 production, RF Brissenden writes "The Sword house, in which much of the action occurs, is a most imaginative setting, which enables us to witness several scenes as they take place simultaneously in different rooms. I know of no other dramatist who has used this device so effectively: as the inner lives of the characters proceed in ironic parallel, impinging on each other from time to time, but only rarely touching with sufficient intimacy for there to be any real communication, a claustrophobic and electrifying atmosphere is built up. [Brissenden, RF. The Plays of Patrick White. Meanjin Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 3, 1964: 243-256]

Quotes

STELLA: (thoughtfully) Strange house... I'm going to love it... I think...

MRS QUODLING: They come an' go up there. Only someone like Mr Abercorn would'uv built a house like that in the first place... and 'e died of it. He was a nut.

(p. Act 1, Scene 1, page 275)


The structure of itself could have been something of a folly, but the rooms as they are now furnished suggest civilised taste in the present owner- contemporary paintings, sculptures, pots, handsome rugs, full bookcases. Rooms of the upper storey, as well of those of the ground-floor, are exposed.

(p. Act 1, Scene 3, page 285)





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