The Fire on the Snow

The Fire on the Snow is a 1941 Australian verse play by Douglas Stewart about the Terra Nova Expedition to Antarctica by Robert Falcon Scott. It premiered on ABC radio on 6 June 1941 to great acclaim.
Background
Exrtracts of the play were published in The Bulletin in 1939.
Stewart said he wanted to write the play for radio "because I wanted to write a long poem about Scott, and this, short of finding a lunatic talkie director who would make a film with verse, dialogue and commentary, was the only way to do it. This commentator form, enabling the poet to speak directly to his audience and to present heroic or mythological themes that cannot very well be performed on the stage, is likely to have an increasing appeal to poets. Since the commentator is a sort of ‘chorus,’ the form of the play is very close to that of the ancient Greek dramas."
Leslie Rees, the ABC's drama editor, called it the "finest-written radio play yet to have come out of Australia, and among the finest-written half-dozen from anywhere."
Original Production
The original production was produced by Frank Clewlow and was to have starred Peter Finch as Scott, but he joined the army only four days before broadcast, so Frank Harvey replaced him. Clewlow decided to employ a female actor, Ida Osbourne, as narrator to contrast with the all-male cast. No copy of this original production exists.
The Bulletin said "it is more important as a poem than as a play, though the natural dramatic quality of what it treats of... the powerful statement it makes on a theme of supreme and absolute human heroism, and, as well, the strong reality in the cold awe of its setting, add up to uncommonly impressive radio drama."
The play's production prompted an enormous amount of correspondence.
Leslie Rees responded saying he thought the production was "magnificent. I am convinced that Douglas Stewart’s dramatic chronicle justified in the event every ounce of the preliminary praise I was in the position to give it. A large number of listeners thought the same and have said so, verbally or in letters. This being so, it was bad luck that three out of four persons who wrote to the Weekly last week should have been against the play."
The production was repeated in August 1941. The play was called "the radio sensation of 1941."
Subsequent productions
The play has been performed on radio several times since, including a later production starring Peter Finch for Frank Clelow and one directed by Tyrone Guthrie for the BBC in 1951.
The play was published in 1945.
Original radio cast
Frank Harvey as Robert Falcon Scott
John Tate as Edward Adrian Wilson
Lou Vernon as Lawrence Oates
Peter Bathurst as Henry Bowers
John Alden as Edgar Evans
Ida Elizabeth Osbourne as narrator
References
External links
Australian theatre productions of the play at AusStage
The Fire on the Snow at AustLit
"Playing the 20th century – episode three: The Fire On The Snow" Radio National 2 Jan 2011 – includes performance of the play
1940s Australian plays
1940s Australian radio dramas
1941 plays
Plays based on actual events
Antarctica in fiction
Cultural depictions of Robert Falcon Scott
Plays by Douglas Stewart
Australian plays about Antarctica
Australian verse dramas