AustLit
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.
At the age of fifteen, Maggie Dence wrote a letter to Chips Rafferty, informing him of her interest in a career as an actress, and asking for advice on how to begin. The popular film actor advised her to take acting classes with Rosalind Kennerdale in Double Bay, or with May Hollingsworth who taught acting at the Independent Theatre in north Sydney.
Maggie took Rafferty at his word and it was at the Independent Theatre, run by the glamorous and innovative Doris Fitton that Maggie learned the craft of acting and theatre making. Maggie was 17 when she appeared on stage for the first time in a production of Volpone. It was in this production that she met her husband to be, Graham Rouse. Fitton had cast Maggie in her first small walk-on role, asking her to perform a pantomime segment in front of the curtain. The problem for Maggie was that that the leading man refused to work opposite her because he was shorter than her. Doris diplomatically came to the rescue and found her another piece to perform.
For the novice actor the years at the ‘Indy’ were exciting and rich. Fitton’s productions were important for theatre in Australia. She staged Sumner Locke Elliott’s Rusty Bugles in 1948 and Pinter’s The Caretaker in 1962. Fitton encouraged a visiting production of Waiting for Godot (featuring Barry Humphries and Peter O’Shaughnessy) in 1958, which was performed at the Independent, and she staged several plays by Arthur Miller. Dence was keen to learn about all of the elements of theatre making and was happy to work back stage with John Whitham. Looking back on this opportunity Maggie realises that ‘it was the best thing that could have happened’ at this early stage in her career. She learned how to organise the props, music, costumes and all the other duties of an assistant stage manager. Whitham took an interest in teaching her properly. In addition she had a chance to observe the way directors worked and most importantly, to watch actors working night after night. Maggie studied them as they prepared and as they performed. She stage-managed for Leo Schofield when he directed Diana Perryman in The Way of the World (1960) and marvelled at the way in which Perryman played Millamant.
Margaret Helen Dence was born in Chatswood in Sydney on 1 February 1942, and grew up in Killara, the youngest of four children. She attended Abbotsleigh School. Although she did not have the chance to act at school she was a keen theatre-goer, accompanying her parents to revues at the Phillip Street Theatre in the city, vaudeville shows at the Tivoli, musicals and plays. Dence recalls seeing Toni Lamond in The Pajama Game (1956) and Zoe Caldwell in Hamlet (1957). She was struck by the wit and humour of Gordon Chater, Ruth Cracknell, Max Oldaker, June Salter, Wendy Blacklock and Barry Humphries in their intimate revue shows at Phillip Street. As she sat in the audience, she used to think it would be ‘heaven’ to be amongst the cast on the stage and had no idea of the hard work, ‘killingly hard work’ involved in the theatre, particularly as she was to learn, in those fast-paced intimate revue theatre shows with the constant changes of costume and numerous song and dance routines.(1) One of the hardest elements of comedy, as Maggie soon realised, is mastering comic timing. It relies on a ‘sixth sense about the audience’ she says.(2) Maggie believes that certain actors have a ‘gift for it’ and the more they work in front of an audience the more it develops. The respected actor and director, John Alden, recognised a particular talent for comedy in the young Maggie Dence and encouraged her to pursue acting as a career.
Gradually Maggie began to perform in some of the plays produced for younger audiences at the Independent; Fitton offered a continuous program for children, some of them commissioned especially for her theatre. Eleanor Witcombe, Ted Hepple and many others wrote for Doris Fitton’s children’s theatre. Dence also appeared in the regular program of plays, appearing as Susanna Walcott in The Crucible (1960) and in a bold and rather stark production of the absurdist play Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionescu, directed by Fitton in 1962, which Maggie recalls seemed to bemuse audiences.
Maggie received her first professional job offer through Doris Fitton. One day the Hungarian-born impresario, Tibor Rudas, telephoned Fitton in search of a ‘tall, dark girl who could play a wicked witch’ in his touring production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Fitton immediately suggested Maggie Dence, who made a striking witch in her long, sleek gown and medieval style head-dress. She enjoyed the production but the work was tough and the pay paltry. In 1963 Maggie was invited to play in three revue shows at the tiny Copenhagen revue club in King’s Cross where she learned a great deal about intimate revue, and how to work in a tight space with no facilities except for a piano. The director Frank Strain soon offered her a role in a new television variety show on ATN 7 alongside Barbara Wyndon and Colin Croft. The show was called Studio A (named for the studio it was filmed in at Epping) and it was broadcast once a week. This television debut was an important opportunity for Maggie as it launched her career in the fledgling medium of television. Suddenly she was earning a decent salary and performing variety for a huge audience.
After a short stint in London, Maggie decided the opportunities for her were far more promising in Australia, especially when she read about a new television comedy program broadcast by ATN 7 in Sydney called The Mavis Bramston Show. To her delight Michael Plant, the Executive Producer of Mavis, sent one of his writers, Jimmy Fishburn, to meet Maggie at the airport when she arrived home to ask her if she wanted to play the title role. Noeline Brown had performed the eponymous role of the rather second-rate English actress around which the central joke of the show revolved, for the first six shows, but Brown was leaving to go to England. It was 1965 and Maggie was well known to producers and audiences from her earlier appearances on Studio A; the producers were confident that she could perform the role in this exciting new variety show on television.
The satirical comedy of The Mavis Bramston Show was different to anything else that had been produced in Australia, and although it followed logically from the variety of Studio A, the sketch material was sharper and the humour far more daring. Mavis delighted its audiences in Sydney and Canberra in its initial six-week season. For the first time, a genuinely Australian satire appeared on television. The material was irreverent and at times politically charged. The actors, Noeline Brown, Gordon Chater, Barry Creyton and producer-actor Carol Raye, became household names very quickly. June Salter joined the team, with Maggie replacing Noeline Brown just before the show moved to national broadcast.
Maggie Dence as Mavis Bramston, 1965, Courtesy of the Seven Network
For Maggie playing Mavis, it was not only a matter of acting the part of the gushing English actress, learning songs and sketches, rehearsing Thursdays, Fridays and Mondays in the studio, camera rehearsing on Tuesday, and learning last minute material before performing the show in front of a live audience for the recording every Tuesday night. There was very little room for errors given the tight schedule. The sole sponsor of the program, Ampol, who paid half of Dence’s salary, sent her all around Australia to promote the show, and their brand. Maggie Dence became the face of The Mavis Bramston Show, and soon found herself appearing all over Australia in her signature black hat with its lattice-like brim, dark ballerina dress and long black gloves, and heavy dark brown Joan Sutherland-style wig on her head. She was called upon to open petrol stations and to speak at conferences, luncheons and business conventions. Once when Dence arrived at Perth Airport she looked out to see a huge crowd of people on the tarmac. Pointing to the mass of people waiting outside, she asked the air steward: ‘Who is on this aircraft?’, only to be told emphatically ‘You’. There was never time to dress and makeup when she arrived in a new airport, and so Maggie wore her Mavis dress under a coat. On that day she ran into the toilet on the plane before it landed, to plop the wig on, before facing a crowd of thousands of fans. The police had to intervene to control the mayhem. After several months of travelling, and dealing with crowds solo, Ampol appointed a minder for her to ensure her safety and manage her hectic schedule.
Gordon Chater, Maggie Dence and Barry Creyton in The Mavis Bramston Show, Courtesy Channel 7.
In between her interstate visits Maggie dashed back to Sydney to rehearse, perform and record. Mavis Bramston had become a national figure with audiences all around the country revelling in the joke of the gormless actress, at the expense of the British. Mavis even ran for parliament at one stage, such was the force of this imaginary figure on the public imagination. The sponsors kept a keen eye on the show, and only once in the twelve months that Maggie played Mavis did they attempt to intervene to change the script, when a sketch mocked a farmer too mercilessly for their liking. Although the schedule was stressful Maggie felt at home in variety on television, and among the crowds at the public events where she ad-libbed brilliantly, given that her speeches were rarely scripted, and where her sustained parody of a talentless visiting celebrity was perfect. According to David Sale who wrote sketches and lyrics for the program and who later became Executive Producer of the show, Maggie ‘devoured the character with relish and skill’.(3)
Maggie Dence’s hyper-theatrical flair is evident in many of the roles she has played. She appeared in Dorothy Hewett’s musical play Bon Bons and Roses for Dolly at the Jane Street Theatre in 1973, playing Ollie Pullitt, the minor figure described in the list of characters as ‘the Old Friend … forever menopausal’, who carries a mannequin around and rises from the audience, becoming a symbolic life force in the play and having to evince a ‘spectacular orgasm’, which she did with gusto. The non-naturalistic grandeur of Hewett’s drama appealed to Maggie and she enjoyed this role in spite of its many challenges.
Dence proved herself adept in the realist drama of television as well, appearing in guest roles in popular Australian series of the 1960’s, including Homicide (1964) Skippy (1967) and The Link Men (1970). She went on to play Rose Sullivan in the The Sullivans during the first two years of the successful, long-running family drama (1976-1977). Nobody could have predicted the impact of this series about an ordinary family in Melbourne during the 1930’s and 1940’s. For Maggie it was a pleasure working for Henry Crawford in a production that valued detail and accuracy. The costumes were authentic and elegant, as were the elaborate hairstyles. But the gruelling schedule and the weekly commuting to Melbourne for recording took its toll on Dence. With her husband, Graham based in Sydney, it was not an easy period and so after some time she decided to leave. The writers suggested that Rose could ‘get TB and go into a clinic for six months’. Maggie told them that she didn’t like that idea and so they said ‘well, we’ll kill you’. For Maggie that meant Rose’s departure really would be permanent, and she did wonder whether that was a good idea in terms of her career. Fortunately she landed on her feet, and went straight into a production of The Comedy of Errors (1978) for Nimrod in Sydney, directed by John Bell.
Maggie Dence with Jane Harders in Shaw’s Arms and the Man, Seymour Centre, 1985. Courtesy Maggie Dence.
One of her most flamboyant roles on television was Merle Bullpitt in the rollicking, anarchic situation comedy Kingswood Country (1980-1984). The series was filmed in front of a studio audience and ran for four years. As the snobbish Merle, playing opposite Colin McEwan as Bob, Maggie’s brilliant comic timing is apparent. Her technique may look effortless but has been developed over many years since she first began to observe Ruth Cracknell, Robina Beard, Gordon Chater and others at the Phillip Street Theatre. Maggie enjoyed working on the comedy, playing the rather ‘vile’ heavy drinking, fashion-loving Merle who insults her husband and brother regularly. The cast rehearsed each episode for a full week, and the costumes, particularly Merle’s garish caftans were extravagantly theatrical. As her husband Bob arrived home, the conversation would go like this:
Bob: Hidey hodey everybody.
Merle: Here comes the party.
Bob: Don’t swoon I’m only human.
Merle: If you’re only human, why do you drag your bum along the ground?
In the long running series Prisoner: Cell Block H Maggie’s character, Bev ‘the Beast’ Baker was initially invented in order to create a ‘clash’ with ‘the Freak’, Maggie Kirkpatrick’s character. But that storyline did not eventuate. In the episodes in which Maggie appeared however in 1984, her character caused considerable strife.
Dence has appeared in numerous television roles in popular series such as A Country Practice and Neighbours and in television movies such as Eden’s Lost as well as in spectacular children’s television films such as More Winners: The Big Wish (1990), an adaptation of Steven J Spears’ young adult novel. Spears himself appeared in this vibrant time-travelling film, in which pantomime and realism work together. The cast included Cameron Nugent, Paul Livingston, Justin Rosniak, Richard Moir and Rowena Wallace.
Maggie appeared in the compelling television adaptation of Nevil Shute’s novel A Town Like Alice (1981) alongside Helen Morse, Bryan Brown, Maurie Fields and Anna Volska. She played the brittle and rather sour Mrs O’Connor who runs the pub in outback Queensland where Helen Morse’s character, the strong minded Englishwoman, Jean Paget, waits for Joe Harman (Bryan Brown) after meeting him during the Second World War in Malaya. Although her role is not a major one in this series, Maggie is memorable as a fierce rather masculine woman who is mean, unbending and narrow minded: a foil for the headstrong and idealistic Jean Paget. The miniseries is one of the of the most beautifully crafted Australian television adaptations ever to have been made in Australia, capturing the experience of soldiers and civilians in Malaya during the War and its aftermath, as well as the reality of life in outback Australia during the post-war period.
Dence is capable of mesmerising transformations. In the landmark film Wake in Fright (1981) she plays a languid and febrile hotel receptionist in an outback hotel, bored, insolent and utterly self-absorbed, in a cameo appearance that is unforgettable in this extraordinary Australian film. In fact Dence has an unusual and compelling capacity to be funny or menacing, and can be both at once as reviewers have noted. HG Kippax observed her in a production of Alan Ayckbourn’s A Small Family Business (1988), an experimental play that offers a dark anatomy of betrayal and corruption. He noted Maggie as the ‘gaunt, withdrawn, dog lover [who] has the mad, dead eyes of Miss Haversham. The distortions can be comic or sinister and are often both simultaneously …’.(4)
Maggie Dence performed alongside Barry Otto and other senior Australian actors in Seventeen by Matthew Whittet; directed by Anne-Louise Sarks (2015). www.belvoir.com.au.
In her long stage career Dence has appeared in a number of significant Australian plays. She appeared in Dorothy Hewett’s The Man From Mukinupin in 1981. Hewett attended rehearsals and together with the director, Rodney Fisher, and cast, they made some changes to the script. This production embraced the mixed modes of naturalism and vaudevillian magic, and along with Maggie, featured Ruth Cracknell, Judi Farr, Colin Friels, John Gaden, Ron Haddrick, Jane Harders and Noni Hazlehurst, and offered stirring music written especially for the production by Jim Cotter. Dence has also appeared in The Season at Sarsaparilla directed by Neil Armfield in 1984, and in Michael Gow’s Away (1993) alongside Nick Enright, John Hamblin, Graham Rouse and Jacki Weaver. In 1987 she played in an important production of The One Day of the Year at the Ensemble Theatre, in Enright’s Good Works in 1994 and Mongrels in 1997. Dence has also appeared in productions of the works of Shakespeare, Shaw, Chekhov and Brecht. Like many Australian actors she has worked in many genres on stage, television and in film.
One of the most interesting and most difficult of all her roles in her view, was in the premiere of Matthew Whittet’s play Seventeen (2015) in which the six actors Peter Carroll, Dence, John Gaden, Genevieve Lemon, Barry Otto and Anna Volska, all except Lemon in their 70’s, play seventeen year olds celebrating the last day of high school. Embodying the high-energy movements of a seventeen-year-old girl in a playground was challenging and a little nerve wracking. The actors danced, clambered up slides and a tall steel climbing frame, and leapt on and off a carousel as they marked the end of their characters’ school years. In the rehearsal period, the cast worked with a group of 17 year old high school students, who performed improvisations, so that the actors could observe their movements and listen to their speech. Sarah Black from the Chunky Move Dance Company came in to help them with the physical demands of playing characters fifty something years younger than themselves, in order to free them up to play a group of excited teenagers. They perfected a dance to Taylor Swift’s hit song ‘Shake it Off’ in one of the most memorable sequences of dance-drama in contemporary Australian theatre.
Footnotes
(1) Interview with Tony Sattler, NFSA, 2000, Wintergreen Productions Pty Ltd.
(2) Interview with Tony Sattler, 2000.
(3) David Sale, Number 96, Mavis Bramston and Me, Fremantle, WA: Vivid Publishing, p. 40.
(4) H.G. Kippax, Sydney Morning Herald, 7 Oct 1988 p. 14.
Image Credits
Header image: Maggie Dence with Jane Harders in Shaw’s Arms and the Man, Seymour Centre, 1985. Courtesy Maggie Dence.
Image one: Poster from Phillip Street Theatre in its early days.
Image three: Maggie Dence as Mavis Bramston, 1965, Courtesy of Seven Studios.
Image four: Gordon Chater, Maggie Dence and Barry Creyton in The Mavis Bramston Show, Courtesy of Seven Studios.
Image five: as header.