| Portrait of a Gentleman | |
| Format: | drama play |
| Runtime: | 60 mins |
| Start Time: | 8pm |
| End Time: | 9pm |
| Country: | Australia |
| Language: | English |
| Syndicates: | ABC |
| Record Location: | Sydney |
| First Aired: | 14 July 1940 |
Portrait of a Gentleman is a 1940 Australian radio play by George Farwell about Thomas Griffiths Wainewright. It was the first time Wainewright's life had been dramatised.
It was subsequently adapted into a stage play.[1]
The original radio production was on the ABC.[2] It won first prize in a 1940 ABC radio play competition.[3] A 1941 article called it one of the most popular plays ever broadcast by the Commission.[4]
The radio play aired again in 1941 (starring Peter Finch), 1946,[5] 1951[6] 1952 and 1956.
The play was published in a 1946 anthology of Australian radio plays edited by Leslie Rees.
Hal Porter later adapted Wainewright's life into a radio play, called The Forger.
Farwell himself wrote that the theme was an inner conflict, the dual nature of Wainewright; put simply and melodramatically, good versus evil."
ABC Weekly called it "no ordinary play. Mr. Farwell has got inside the character of Wainewright the Poisoner, and has presented the queer feeling such gentry have, that the world doesn’t understand them; that everything they do is right, and that, if the world only understood the circumstances, it would see that there was no other way for a Superior Person to act."
Leslie Rees called it "a convincing and stylish hour-long radio drama, in which a bizarre character was strongly projected but kept believably human."[7]
The Melbourne Advocate said "This successful play has quality beyond question; but I think that it furnishes a misreading of Wainewright's character. Further, it is toolong."[8]
ABC Weekly reviewed a 1946 production calling it "an expertly constructed and excellently written factual."
The Bulletin said "remarks revealing the quirks of an abnormal character are the best portions of the play. The character itself, interesting enough, is static. Background good, but commonplace."
In 1941 Leslie Rees listed the play as among those radio dramas "clearly written for radio and could not, in their present shape, be used elsewhere."
However a stage play version was announced in 1941 as a possible production at Alec Coppel's Whitehall Company in Sydney for 1942.[9] This production did not appear to take place.
The stage play was highly commended in a 1945 playwriting competition held by the Playwrights' Advisory Board.[10] However it appears to have not been produced.
According to ABC Weekly, "Farwell tells the extraordinary story of Wainewright. London dandy, writer and artist, who was suspected of poisoning three of his near relations and was transported to Van Diemen’s Land, not for these unproven misdeeds but on a charge of forgery. Mr. Farwell has realised a portrait of sinister interest and has attempted an explanation of Wainewright's complex personality. The story starts when the brilliant young Thomas VVainewright comes to live with his rich and ailing uncle near London. Somehow that uncle does not live long. Thomas, the man of the world, ever in need of funds, persuades his innocent sister-in-law to insure her life for a large sum; misadventure follows the signing of the policy."
It added, "The last scenes, showing Wainewright in the Hobart penal colony,teaching painting to the daughters, fat, ignorant settlers’ wives at five shillings an hour, have grim, stark, ironical qualities."