The Offshore Island
1959 (UK TV)
Cast includes: Tim Seely, Diane Clare, Ann Todd, Robert Brown, Phil Brown,Dan Jackson
Producer: Dennis Vance
Writer: Margharita Laski
A production which seemed at the time to rival Nineteen Eighty-Four in terms of controversy was The Offshore Island, a condensed version (by Michael Voysey) of Marghanita Laski's 1954 debut play, produced by Dennis Vance and designed by Barry Learoyd. Eight years after a nuclear war has reduced much of Europe to a wasteland, Rachel Verney (Ann Todd) and her two teenage children, James and Mary (Tim Seely and Diane Clare), live in isolated tranquility in a valley which - due to a freak topographical effect - has escaped the ravages of fallout and war (a device later used in Anthony Gardner's Z for Zachariah for "Play for Today" in 1984). Their peace is disturbed by the arrival of a patrol of American soldiers, who tell them that the war is still going on and that rather than being there to help, they have come to transport the family to a relocation camp in the United States, where they can work for the war effort and all their needs will be provided for. It turns out, however, their motives are not so benevolent. Considered 'Contaminated Persons', they will be sterilised to prevent them having mutated offspring, after their land has been destroyed with a small tactical nuclear device. A Russian patrol arrives and it transpires that although there is a truce between the two sides - so that they can join forces against China! - this will not affect the fate of the Verneys, with James eventually being shot by the American Captain (Phil Brown) and Rachel and Mary electing to remain in their home, waiting for the bomb. Somewhat predictably given the subject matter, reactions to the play were firmly split along party lines. The Times observed: "Miss Laski seems to have written it more in an excess of public-spirited zeal than out of any creative urgency. Like Mr J B Priestley in Doomsday For Dyson [an anti-nuclear ITV play shown the year before], she comes to grind her axe about the Bomb. From [the arrival of the Russians] the play becomes a duologue between humanity and politics; and it is conducted with a dishonesty that identifies political man with the stock image of the tail-wagging jargon-ridden American." On the other hand, Ivor Brown (writing in The Listener) countered: "Whether Miss Laski was being fair to American servicemen (with Pentagon politics behind them) I do not know. But surely there is a case for welcoming in television drama occasional approaches to the greatest problem in the world's history, about which nobody with any spark of failing can fail to be in some way tendentious. Complete objectivity in such a case is either impossible or, if possible, dull. The Offshore Island was not written for the industry of entertainment. Dennis Vance's production had an excellent urgency and vigour.
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updated february 2010