Possum Paddock (1919)
It reeks of the eucalyptus.
(Evening Star, 20 May 1920)
The play that came to be known as Possum Paddock was ‘seen for the first time’ in Kate Howarde’s ‘perfectly equipped’ Pavilion Theatre in Armidale (erected on the Town Hall yard) on Monday 17 February 1919. It was amongst the final shows in Kate’s travelling canvas theatre, as she closed the deal to sell the tent to a Sydney buyer two days later. The play had no title; it was simply advertised in the Armidale Express as ‘Miss Howarde’s great nameless Australian play’. In a canny marketing strategy, she offered two guineas ‘to the person selecting the most appropriate title’.
There’s no existing cast list and only three actors from her current touring cast—Jack Souter, Kate herself and later Lesley Adrienne—went on to appear in any subsequent revivals. Lesley Adrienne was also cast in the film adaptation. There were no reviews from its try-out production, but subsequent commentary suggests that the show ‘had scored a hearty reception’.
Choosing to give the play an airing in Armidale was apposite, however. Over twenty years, Kate became familiar with the New England community through her annual ‘bushwacking’ circuit. ‘Kate Howarde is a lover of things Australian,’ wrote the Canowindra Star (10 October 1919).
And it was mainly through her great love for her own country that she was prompted to write Possum Paddock. In every line of the dialogue and in every situation, the true Australian spirit shines forth. Miss Howarde has taken her characters from the great outback, not from hearsay, but from absolute first-hand knowledge of the men and women who are building the spirit of this country. The whole play reeks of realism.
While not overtly stated in the script, it is clear through several internal references that Kate’s ‘characters and … situation’ are derived from her familiarity with those that inhabited the network of roads known as Fossickers Way, and that the McQuades’ selection is in the vicinity of the railway siding township of Manilla (nestled at the junction of the Namoi and Manilla Rivers, 100km west of Armidale; 45 km north of Tamworth). The period setting, like On Our Selection, is the late 1890s.
Kate knew bush folk and the issues they faced intimately, and at its most poignant, Possum Paddock explores their resilience in the face of progress and change. Unlike the comedic snapshot of selection life provided in Bert Bailey’s hugely successful On Our Selection, with its reliance on class and the contrasting bush-city dichotomy, Possum Paddock offers a more nuanced tapestry of a bush community in transition, where the old Bulletin tropes are re-evaluated.
The performance draft of the play appears to have been in existence for some time. Kate related in an article with the Christchurch Star (28 November 1919) that, following her experience of the San Francisco earthquake (where all her ‘precious manuscripts’ were lost), she duplicated everything she wrote. ‘If she had not taken this precaution, she might have had to rewrite a portion of Possum Paddock, the original [manuscript] having been partially burnt through falling into a fire soon after it was completed’.
The play was certainly conceived and written after her friend Bert Bailey’s On Our Selection (1912)—a dispute over neighbouring properties being the common inciting incident. It may have been amongst the batch of plays (including The White Slave Traffic and Why Girls Leave Home) she drafted during her highly productive creative period while resident at the National Theatre, Balmain. Philip Lytton’s The Waybacks at Home and in Town (1915)—based on the stories by Henry Fletcher—also appeared around this time as the next hugely successful iteration in the emerging genre; the motion picture Our Friends, the Hayseeds (written and directed by Beaumont Smith) premiered in 1917. Bailey’s and Lytton’s plays were both adaptations; Kate, on the other hand, developed a unique and original scenario, drawn from life.
In an interview with the Adelaide Critic (24 December 1919), Kate revealed that she took the overriding plot from a situation she had witnessed herself in Hay, in New South Wales:
Two families with only a creek separating their holdings had a dispute over a horse, and the stubborn bidding of the two families resulted in its sale for £300, though its absolute value was only about £100. That gave me the starting point of my story, and at first I thought of calling my play The Other Side of the Creek. Then, in place of a horse, I substituted a paddock, because the first title would have applied equally well to a play about America or Africa, whereas Possum Paddock speaks for itself in being outback in Australia.
She also revealed that it took her three weeks to complete her Australian Comedy-Drama in Four Acts, writing ‘from six o’clock in the morning up to ten o’clock at night’.
Kate followed the established formula in developing her comedy-drama, vividly showing the humour and vicissitudes of selection life, populated with quaintly drawn character studies. Further, where Bailey and Lytton relied more on melodramatic tropes, Kate opted to hang her entertainment on a burlesque structure. She knew the form well: she was obviously aware of her colleagues James and Charles MacMahon’s national tour of E.E. Rice’s Evangeline, or, the Belle of Arcadia (1874) in 1890—the quintessential American burlesque; and Kate had toured her own Burlesque Company extensively throughout Australia and New Zealand over thirty years. Indeed, Kate’s cast for the Sydney premiere were all experienced burlesque/vaudeville performers.
The plot is necessarily slight, providing a string of short vaudeville skit opportunities for her cast to exploit (many stage directions merely indicate ‘business’).
Andrew McQuade, a wayback selector, battling with the drought and a bank overdraft, is at odds with his neighbour and curmudgeon Dan Martin, a more prosperous farmer, who covets McQuade’s 50-acre block known as ‘Possum Paddock’. Martin knows McQuade to be in financial difficulty and makes him an offer to buy the paddock, but only offers one-fifth of its value.
Another neighbour, bachelor squatter Hugh Bracken, hearing of McQuade’s trouble, offers to assist, but the old man’s steely independence rejects the attempts. Whilst the two are conferring, McQuade receives word that the bank intends to foreclose. This is a huge blow to the family, particularly to Nancy, McQuade’s daughter, who has recently returned from her schooling in the city. Nancy, meanwhile, has fallen in love with Fred Daring, a stock inspector some years her senior, with a dubious past.
Whilst the bush Montagues and Capulets are trading blows, romance is on the minds of Martin’s two daughters, Mary Ellen and Anastasia, and the McQuade’s boys, Billy and Bobby. But it’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream that appears to inspire the series of madcap episodes charting their clandestine meetings in the antipodean Forest of Arden. The slapstick mayhem that ensues when the boys entertain the girls at afternoon tea (the girls hiding under the table to avoid their father’s detection) became a highlight of the production.
At the auction on-site a few weeks later, it seems likely that ‘Possum Paddock’ will finally be sold to the persistent Martin. Bracken arrives from over the range in the nick of time to keep the sale going with his bids. The latter gets to the end of his financial resources, and Martin’s success seems assured, until the widow Nella Carsley—Mum McQuade’s wealthy cousin—arrives from Sydney. Advised of the situation, she dramatically outbids Martin, and restores the paddock to McQuade.
Thereafter, the feud between the neighbours subsides, replaced by an ongoing debate over the impending construction of a branch line of the Main North railway line.
Another unlikely, yet manipulated, coupling bridging the divide—much inspired by the gulling scene of Beatrice and Benedict in Much Ado About Nothing—is that of Shad Cummings, the McQuade’s rouseabout, and Martin’s eccentric spinster sister, Elizabeth.
Meanwhile, having settled into the McQuade family, Mrs Carsley insinuates herself into Nancy and Deering’s fledgling relationship. Deering, having learned that Nancy will imminently be the recipient of a huge endowment (courtesy of her uncle), actively pursues the much younger heiress, and encourages her to elope with him. As it turns out, Deering and Mrs Carsley have a past: they were engaged to be married, but he jilted her on their wedding day, absconding with her life savings.
On the night of a planned elopement, Nella confronts Nancy and, to prove Deering’s perfidy, gets her to consent to taking her place at the trysting hour; Nancy will observe the rendezvous while concealed in the summer house. Deering is cajoled by the wily widow, and his hand is entirely exposed. Nancy is subsequently consoled by Leonard Alldress (an English Johnny Raw) while the merry widow eventually succumbs to the advances of the plump and jocular Hugh Bracken. To square off, Shad and Elizabeth are smitten, and Billy proposes to Mary Ellen.
Dad ultimately becomes wealthy by selling ‘Possum Paddock' when the railway passes through his land. A bush dance party to celebrate both the windfall and the multiple nuptials concludes the play.
‘It is nothing pretentious’, Kate confirmed to the Dominion Post (3 April 1920), ‘and does not presume to be educative—it is just a very amusing and entertaining bush play, with interesting “type” characters, plenty of simple, healthy comedy, and some clear, wholesome love-making, with never a suspicion of suggestion or double-entry hints’.
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Kate was sufficiently encouraged by the response to the Armidale performance that she took a six-week lease on J.C. Williamson’s Theatre Royal in Castlereagh Street, Sydney. In the meantime, the tour finished, and the company disbanded following the dates in Tamworth. Along with the capital raised from the sale of her tent, Kate also held an auction on 9 May (putting up building materials and other equipment from her Stadium venture) to raise further capital.
It was announced in the Sydney Morning Herald (30 August 1919) that the metropolitan premiere of Possum Paddock would take place on Saturday, 6 September. The display ad, in the same issue as the announcement, carried the declaration:
The All-Australian Comedy Drama, Possum Paddock …
Written in Australia
By an Australian
Acted by Australians
Scenery Australian
Full of Australian Sentiment
Fuller of Australian Comedy
With a tremendous appeal to the Australian Heart.
Now waiting the endorsement of its first Australian audience.
It’s a Riot of Sensation and Laughter.
IF YOU DON’T WANT TO LAUGH, DON’T COME.
In later ads, Kate reinforced the marketing strategy, suggesting that ‘Possum Paddock is the spot where the real Digger humour was bred and born,’ and encouraged Sydney audiences to ‘Buy only Australian-made goods’, and to ‘see this real Australian Play’.
The production was ‘under the direction of Kate Howard’, the only woman entrepreneur in Australia. Jack Souter remained her business manager, and Gordon Conrad her representative. The box plan opened at Palings on Wednesday, 3 September: ‘Popular prices will prevail’.
For her Sydney production, Kate assembled eighteen players, many making their debut with her enterprise. The marquee name was Fred MacDonald—‘the inimitable Dave from On Our Selection’—in the role of Billy McQuade. Much was made, too, of the appearance of young Jack Kirby, late of the AIF: ‘Diggers, please note!’ Kirby was rapidly making a name for himself as an actor under Julius Knight before the war broke out. He was severely gassed in France before being appointed to organise the famous company of Smart Set Entertainers (regarded as the best band of soldier entertainers at the war) in the 4th Division Anzac Concert Party. Possum Paddock was his first appearance since returning from Europe. The other marketing drawcard was the appearance of Neill Alexander as Shad Cummings, the McQuade’s roustabout. According to the Sunday Times (14 September 1919), Alexander was a real-life bushman and had never appeared on the stage before Kate met him while bushwhacking. ‘I decided at once that he would make an ideal Shad’.
Possum Paddock cast 1919: (Clockwise, from top left) John Cosgrove (Dad McQuade), Fred MacDonald (Billy McQuade), Vyvyan Langley (Elizabeth Martin), Rose Rooney (Nancy McQuade) and Jack Kirby (Hugh Bracken)
Veterans John Cosgrove and Cora Warner were cast as the central protagonists, Andrew and Maggie McQuade (Dad and Mum), the owners of Possum Paddock; their covetous neighbour, Dan Martin, played by Johnston Weir, his sister, Elizabeth, by Vyvyan Langley.
The four sets of lovers were played by Fred MacDonald, Jessie Dale, Jack Souter, and Mable Waters. There are two ‘love triangles’: Dad McQuade’s daughter, city-educated Nancy, is embroiled in a tug-of-war between the reprobate stock inspector, Fred Deering, and young new chum, Englishman Leonard Alldress (played by Leonard Budderick and Leslie Woods, respectively). While Kate’s daughter, Lesley Adrienne, had performed the role of Nancy at its out-of-town tryout, she had, in the meantime, accepted a role with Ben and John Fuller’s Dramatic Players (to perform Belle Gordon, the schoolmistress, in Cripple Creek at the Grand Opera House); the role of Nancy at the premiere was played by Rose Rooney (her first major assignment, after playing several roles in support, including with the Florence Rockwell Dramatic Company, and the recent revival of The Waybacks). Seemingly coming out of retirement, Kate herself played the widow, Nella Carsley, juggling the attentions of the melodramatic, two-timing villain, Fred Deering (who had jilted her twelve years earlier) and the all-round nice-guy, squatter Hugh Bracken. Reliable players, Syd Knowles and Cleave McGrather, filled the ancillary roles.
Possum Paddock: ‘Dan Martin (Alec MacDonald) informs Dad McQuade (John Cosgrove) that he will have “Possum Paddock” at any cost’
Table Talk, 30 October 1919
Possum Paddock: Cora Warner (Mum McQuade) separates her boys, Fred MacDonald (Billy) and Jack Souter (Bob)
Table Talk, 30 October 1919
New and elaborate scenery was painted by ‘the master scenic artist’ Harry Whaite (1855-1931).1 The Buttonhole Costume Company2 provided the wardrobe under Kate’s supervision.
It was Kate’s role as producer, and her preoccupation with ‘Australia-made’, that attracted initial commentary after the opening performance of Possum Paddock on Saturday, 6 September. ‘It is not often that a woman in Australia attains to the height of a big theatrical production’, offered Referee (10 September 1919), ‘and Miss Kate Howarde is to be warmly congratulated on her work in Possum Paddock. Not only in the play under her direction, but she also acts convincingly as Nella Carsley, the city widow whose coming to the selection means so much’. ‘If all Australian goods were as much in demand as was Possum Paddock last night’, wrote the Sunday Times (7 September 1919), ‘this would be a paradise for the manufacturers. Possum Paddock is a bush burlesque with enough plot to give the excellent character actors plenty of scope’. Smith’s Weekly (4 October 1919) summarised the experience: ‘Judging by the packed house and the merry and responsible audience, it is evident that Australians are out to welcome and support things Australian—providing always that the goods are there’. Much of this appeal was caught in Harry Whaite’s scenic art:
Possum Paddock, with its captivating tableau of the back-blocks homestead amidst the gold-topped foliage of the gum trees, brings on Dad and Mum, the rowdy boys and the shy girls, and various bush freaks in a manner which keeps large audiences convulsed throughout the evening. The success of Kate Howarde’s play is thus already assured. (Sydney Morning Herald, 13 September 1919)
The reviews were consistently effusive. The Sunday Times (7 September 1919) praised the setting and the dialogue—‘Australian enough to be homely in the ears of anyone who was born on the wide countryside’—but above all they found that ‘Possum Flat [sic] was exceedingly funny. … Last night the crowded house laughed and laughed, scarcely being able to breathe before it had to laugh again’.
Scenic artist Harry Whaite in his studio (c.1910), was living at 7 Olive Street in Paddington at this time
Acting honours were given to Fred MacDonald [as the elder son Billy], who ‘gives another character study that is fit to rank with his famous Dave in On Our Selection’.3 The immediate response from the Sun (7 September 1919) was that the play would be a success, was ‘a foregone conclusion’, and spent a good deal of column space on the contribution of the actors:
Very good is the ‘Mum’ of Miss Cora Warner, a warm-hearted and muddle-headed bush mum to life, whose cure for most of the troubles of life is a cup of tea. … Mr Jack Souter as the youngest son [Bobby] provides a rather rawer comedy [than Fred MacDonald], as a younger son should do. But the pair are the life of the play. Mr Jack Kirby … is a manly and breezy figure as the selector’s squatter friend. Mr Johnston Weir is perhaps a trifle over-emphatic as the grasping neighbour—there are no half times in his unpleasantness to the heroic cocky struggling with his mortgage. Miss Kate Howarde’s cousin Nella is very well done, and so are the broad comedy parts of the two bush girls, played by Miss Jessie Dale and Miss Alice Walton. A broad caricature of a really unpleasing lady is that given by Miss Vivian Langley [sic] [as Elizabeth Martin] as the stock-inspecting villain—he really isn’t so much a villain as a bounder—Mr Leslie Woods bounds convincingly, and Mr John Cosgrove is a poor cocky whose troubles simply will not overcome his general air of cheerfulness; his head is bald but unbowed. Miss Rose Rooney plays the cocky’s beauteous daughter as well as such an unconvincing part can be played. …
The Daily Telegraph (8 September 1919) quibbled that Possum Paddock was ‘merely a poor imitation of its prototype’, but conceded that ‘there is plenty … to laugh at [and] it is the laughs that will make Possum Paddock a popular success’. They also drew attention to the songs and ‘pleasant incidental music’ provided by Bert Roche. The Sydney Morning Herald (8 September 1919) also predicted a long run, but suggested that had the script been submitted to the average metropolitan expert actor-manager or press critic, it would have been turned down without the least hesitation’.
For one thing, the amount of dialogue is overwhelming in proportion to the slight dramatic movement. Again, there are about half a dozen proposal scenes, to some extent differentiated, no doubt, but not to an extent which in the least justifies their recurrence. However, no one in the profession, or out of it, for that matter, will grudge Miss Howard her success.
Referee (10 September 1919) concurred, with the view that Possum Paddock ‘should rival the success of On Our Selection. … It is long since the old Royal held such a house, every part being crowded, and the purveyors of Australian drama should be highly gratified by Australia’s reception fit. ‘Life in the Bush’, summarised the Hebrew Standard of Australasia (12 September 1919), that Possum Paddock ‘is cleverly shown and well staged’.
Interestingly, the Daily Telegraph (13 September 1919) revisited the production after a week and slightly modified its commentary:
The crowds that throng the Theatre Royal point to a moral. Here is a type of play, Possum Paddock, which has no claims to being a work of art, though its construction shows a working knowledge of dramatic technique, a play which, bearing an extreme family likeness to On Our Selection, is not an improvement upon that comedy, yet which is not only attracting full houses night after night, but which sends its audiences away still chuckling over the absurdities of the characters and the delightful Australianism of Fred MacDonald.
Kate Howarde as the Widow Nella Carsley
Critic, 7 January 1920
Jesse Dale [Mrs Fred MacDonald] as Mary Ellen
Critic, 7 January 1920
Cora Warner (Mum) and Jim Perry (Shad)
Table Talk, 30 October 1919
They conclude by confirming that the success is a response to the fact that ‘Possum Paddock is purely and riotously Australian … Evidently, the Australian play has come to stay. … The campaign for Australian-made goods has been set in action at the right moment. Here is an Australian-made play for us to sample’.
Within a week of the opening, the cast had been augmented by ‘two of the best little comedians the Australian stage has seen. They are Archie and Alf Kookaburra’.
Every night since their inclusion in the cast, these two accomplished birds have held up the show for at least three minutes. At one part of the play where Fred MacDonald and Jack Souter have their audience particularly amused, Archie and Alf join in the laughter and prolong the fun. Miss Howarde wants some more actors of this type, and she is willing to buy as many as can be brought along. (Sunday Times, 21 September 1919)
The pair were caught as chicks in the bush. It seems the birds only failed once. On that evening, they reserved ‘their shriek of incredulous laughter’ for the entrance of Nancy McQuade with the villain Deering (it was when the villain was assuring the heroine of his regard that the kookaburras began to laugh shrilly, and the impromptu criticism all but brought the house down).
It was also reported by the Daily Telegraph (15 September 1919) that one ‘interested spectator of Possum Paddock’ in the opening week was Steele Rudd (Arthur Howey Davis), the author of On Our Selection.
Kate hadn’t expected the production to reach the level of success it did and had only booked the theatre for six weeks. After a virtual sell-out season, Possum Paddock closed on 17 October 1919. On the same day, the play was gazetted [7819] for copyright under the name of ‘Kate Howarde Black (known professionally as Kate Howarde)’.
During its final weeks, it was announced (Table Talk, 2 October 1919) that by arrangement with J. & N. Tait, Kate Howarde would present a Melbourne season of Possum Paddock at the King’s Theatre, commencing 1 November (Cup Week). The King’s Theatre was then leased by Bert Bailey and Julius Grant.
To avoid a two-week layoff for the company, Kate and Jack Souter decided to go ‘bushwhacking,’ and they travelled overland to Melbourne, playing at the King’s Theatre, Katoomba (Saturday, 18 October 1919), then at Lithgow, Orange, Bathurst, Young, Forbes, Cootamundra, Wagga Wagga, and Albury before arriving in Melbourne.
The cast changes for the Melbourne season included Jim Perry (Shad); Leslie Woods taking over as Fred Deering, while Leonard Buderick stepped into the role of Dan Martin; Louis Machilton took on Leonard Alldress.
‘There is plenty to laugh at in Possum Paddock’, ventured the Argus (3 November 1919), ‘Miss Kate Howarde’s new Australian play, and the crowded audience at the King’s Theatre on Saturday night took full advantage of the fact. Miss Howarde’s long stage experience has enabled her to judge just what sayings and situations will catch the popular fancy.’ The Herald (3 November 1919) felt that the production gave ‘further demonstration that there is a large public for plays of Australian manufacture’. The Age (3 November 1919) agreed, but craved for ‘an Australian dramatist [to] draw for us the real Australian, instead of a caricature, and the Australian play instead of American trash [to] hold the Australian stage.’ ‘The mounting is effective,’ concluded Table Talk (6 November 1919), ‘the Australian scenes being particularly well done. Possum Paddock moves briskly, and it succeeded in keeping the big audience well amused. ... It sets new standards for Australian drama. Miss Howarde was called and applauded as the author as well as a successful actress’. The Sunday Times confidently espoused that ‘a long run for this Australian piece is assured’.
Possum Paddock Advertisement
Journal (Adelaide), 16 October 1920
Australia’s only woman entrepreneur, Kate Howarde
Table Talk, 13 November 1919
The production enjoyed a standing room only run for its seven-week season, which concluded on Friday 19 December.
Kate took advantage of the national media attention the production received and arranged a season, at extremely short notice, in Adelaide. A new ‘temporary’ outdoor stage was constructed at the Exhibition Gardens ready for the opening on Boxing Night, Friday 26 December. It was estimated that 6,000 people were at the Gardens for the first performance. ‘The Kate Howarde comedy-drama’, declared the Register (31 December 1919), ‘may well be written down as a great Australian success ...’.
It is pleasing to be able to state this, for Miss Howarde’s enterprise is alone deserving of success, and further, because she is a great believer in the Australian artist. Possum Paddock is funny in the extreme. It is not an exaggeration to assert that throughout the piece a laugh is scored with almost every second line.
After ‘enjoying a phenomenally successful run’, Possum Paddock closed in Adelaide on Saturday 10 January 1920.
The Company then undertook a tour of regional South Australia, playing in Burra, Port Pirie, Kapunda, Peterborough, Mt Barker, Mt Gambia, Bordertown, and Murray Bridge. Kate’s daughter Lesley Adrienne joined the production when the company reached Narracoorte; but here, she took on her mother’s role as the widow Nella Carsley.
Architectural drawing of the facade of Theatre Royal, Brisbane, 1891—John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland. Brisbane's first licensed theatre, the Victoria Theatre, opened at 80 Elizabeth Street in 1865. It closed in 1880 and was rebuilt, opening in April 1881 as the Theatre Royal. It was again remodelled in 1911 when electric lights were installed.
Possum Paddock opened its three-week Brisbane season at the Theatre Royal on Saturday 21 February 1920. The press advertisement said it all:
A phenomenal and instantaneous success. Packed, jammed, and crammed houses have witnessed this delightful and refreshing comedy. The great Australian ‘outback’ brought to the heart of your city. Possum Paddock simply breathes an aroma of our great gum trees and reeks of eucalyptus. A laugh, a scream, a yell—and then some.
After yet another ‘record run,’ the production then toured to Toowoomba and other centres in the Darling Downs before crossing the border. Kate then gave performances in her old stomping ground in the Northern Rivers. The tour closed in Lismore on 20 March 1920, and the Company returned to Sydney by ferry, and took a well-deserved break.
Kate had become so well known and popular at this time that she became an advertorial product spokeswoman for Dr Sheldon’s New Discovery for Coughs and Colds.
The Kate Howarde Dramatic Company then crossed the Tasman to New Zealand and presented Possum Paddock at J.C. Williamson’s Grand Opera House (Wellington) on Easter Saturday Night (3 April 1920) and played for 12 nights. The company included Leonard Buderick (Dad McQuade), Fred MacDonald (Billy), Jack Souter (Bobby), Albert Harrison (Chad Cummings), Jack Kirby (Hugh Bracken), Alex McDonald (Dan Martin), Leslie Woods (Fred Deering), Phil McGrath (Leonard Alldress), George Watson (Miles Gillies), Bert Lynne (James Ogden), Vyvyan Langley (Elizabeth Martin), Jessie Dale (Mary Ellen Martin), Alice Walton (Anastasia Martin), Cora Warner (Maggie McQuade), Lesley Adrienne (Nancy McQuade), Kate Howarde (Nella Carsley).
They then progressed north for a 12-night season at His Majesty’s Theatre (Auckland), and played one or two nights in Hamilton, Whanganui, Hawera, Hastings, Manawatu, Ashburton, Wairarapa, Oamaru, and Dunedin. The tour concluded with a final performance on 12 June at the Theatre Royal in Christchurch.
Fresh from their ‘triumphal march through New Zealand’, Possum Paddock embarked on a tour of the north coast of New South Wales, opening at the Victoria Theatre, Newcastle, on 10 July 1920. Lesley Adrienne was still with the ensemble, but other cast changes included Albert Harrison (Shad), Alex McDonald and Leslie Woods (Dan Martin and Fred Deering respectively). Performances in Maitland, Singleton, then Muswellbrook, Glen Innes and Inverell followed. By 22 July the troupe were in Warwick, progressing to Beaudesert, Ipswich, Maryborough, and further north to Bundaberg, Rockhampton and Killarney before ‘western line’ centres of Emerald, Alpha, Jerico and Barcadline in early August. Retracing their steps, the Kate Howarde Dramatic Company headed back towards Sydney, adding new productions in addition to Possum Paddock: Edwin Jerome’s Irish comedy drama Killarney and Rhine (1898) was introduced in Toowoomba on 4 September (featuring ‘Ireland’s Sweetest Songster’ Larry Dwyer).
Coming full circle, Possum Paddock returned to Armidale, playing at the Town Hall on 11 September. The Armidale Express (3 September 1920) summarised the astonishing twelve-month journey of Kate Howarde’s enterprise:
The Australian comedy of life in the back-blocks has had a remarkable run since it was first produced at the Theatre Royal, Sydney, in September last, where it leapt into fame in one night and ran for seven weeks, exclusive of ten matinees. Melbourne also followed with a seven-week season, and Adelaide and Brisbane seasons were packed to the doors. The Company has just returned from New Zealand, where they played for eleven weeks, and are now on their way to Brisbane to play a return visit. The press has been most eulogistic in its praise of Possum Paddock.
The season and tour closed in Scone on 20 September.
Ben and John Fuller’s Dramatic Players briefly took over the production and relaunched Possum Paddock for a two-week revival season at the Grand Opera House (Sydney) from Saturday 2 October. The new cast included Lillian Wiseman and Collet Barker Dobson (Mum and Dad McQuade), Agnes Dobson (Nancy), Rutland Beckett (Fred Deering), Austen Milroy (Hugh Bracken), William Stewart and d’Arcy Kelway (Billy and Bobby McQuade) with Pearl Hillnough, John Galway and Crosbie Ward; Nellie Ferguson was given ‘a rousing reception’ as Nella Carsley.
Possum Paddock, the Motion Picture (1921)
Kate and her players were otherwise preoccupied with preparations for the screen version of Possum Paddock. The motion picture version was shot at Charles Cozens Spencer’s Rushcutter’s Bay Studios in the last two weeks of September 1920 (with some location scenes filmed on the outskirts of Sydney). Actor Charles Villiers—fresh from Beaumont Smith’s While the Billy Boils—was engaged by Kate, and they worked together on the ‘photo-play’ and shared responsibilities for directing (although contemporary reporting listed Villiers as the director); Kate, meanwhile, kept the full production credit. The cinematographer was William Lacey Percival. Kate played Nella Carsley and used her touring cast: John Cosgrove (Andrew McQuade), James Martin (Dan Martin), Lesley Adrienne (Nancy McQuade), Jack Kirby (Hugh Bracken), and Cora Warner (Mum McQuade) on screen.
Still from Possum Paddock, the film by Charles Villiers and Kate Howarde, 1921: John Cosgrove, Grand Kirby, Cora Warner and Lesley Adrienne
Early screenings took place at Star Pictures, Camden, on 21-22 December 1921. Prior to its release, however, the NSW Censors demanded that Kate cut a subplot about an unmarried mother, specifically a scene in which she imagines herself desperately throwing her baby into the river.
The film had its official premiere on 29 January 1921, and played for a week at the Lyric Theatre [a Union Picture Theatre] in Sydney (with H.B. Warner’s The White Dove in support). Prior to the premiere screening, ‘a party of thoroughly trained Australian children [enacted] incidents of bush life’. There were also special songs performed, and a finale tableau.
The Sunday Times (30 January 1921) thought the film ‘spoilt by its length’.
Judicious cutting would have improved it immensely, as there is not enough action to carry it legitimately through seven reels, its present length. Otherwise, it is acceptable, and Miss Howarde’s first venture in filmmaking is promising. Charles Villiers directed it and picked good scenery and settings as a background. It has some crudities, and exaggerations allowed for the sake of comedy are rampant. ... As the name implies, it is a yarn of the outback with a number of well-worn situations strung together as a plot. Messrs Martin and Cosgrove carry off the acting honours.
The Sun (30 January 1921) concurred with regard to the film’s length, but praised the actors and the cinematography, concluding that ‘Possum Paddock is a good advertisement for the local industry’.
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The success of both play and film was sufficient to finance a ten-month international tour for the Kate Howarde Dramatic Company. Departing Australia on 5 November 1921, the tour began in India, before dates in South Africa (Durban, Cape Town, and Johannesburg, where she played to ‘an enthusiastic public’ at the Standard Theatre, and earned ‘great praise from the critics’), but the Company fled directly to Southampton when martial law was proclaimed in Johannesburg following the mining revolution.
Kate detailed her subsequent time in a rare interview to the Cootamundra Herald (9 October 1924):
I visited London (Oh, you great, big hub of the Universe!), in which I lingered many long and dear days. … I visited Glasgow and Edinburgh; and admired the wonderful heather, also ‘Ye Banks an’ Braes’, scooted across to Paris (France’s own white city), for several salubrious weekends, then, at the termination of my stay, ‘over home’, I left by the Mauritania, which did her then record trip of four days and five hours from Tilbury to New York Harbour.
Again the ‘admiration stop’ was well to the fore—this time the statue of Liberty being the object of our regard.
Concerning America, she said, ‘Of course, America is an old story to me, as I have lived for some time in New York, Chicago, Denver, and San Francisco, respectively. … Do I like America? Well, it would be proclaiming oneself a Goth to express other than intense appreciation of the marvellous—yes, truly marvellous—progressiveness of that wonderful country. My only regret is that we Aussies are not better known—should I say, our country? That is, of course, the larger way of putting it; but when I tell you that I was complimented by one of the biggest florists on Broadway on the marvellous manner in which I had so speedily acquired their tongue (where does the poor old English language come in?), this is an absolute fact. Again, I was asked one night if I had ever tasted butter. Can you beat that?’ Miss Howarde enquiringly asked. ‘I said, “Well, we have a few cows over in Australia!” And then I proceeded to give a further idea of just how much territory we Australians have, and the incidental assets that accrue therefrom. This happened in New York City. … The greatest sight I saw abroad—and I have seen many wonderful, and many brilliant—but to my gaze the landing of our own frozen mutton in the Suez was the most impressive. The intense delight of such a number of wretched, half-starved natives, whose poor wistful, hungry eyes fairly gleamed with eager anticipation, as the great crates of food—mutton and cheese and butter—wonderful, great gleaming golden rolls are these last—and so, so different to the dreadful local “horror” of the same ilk. … Well, I could go on hour upon hour, talking of countries, ideas, impressions, and sights; but in finalising this subject, I must echo the wish of many of our far-seeing sons of Australia: that our great, big, wonderful country was better and more widely realised.
In Great Britain, she visited Glasgow, Edinburgh, and London; then to Paris; and concluded her world tour with dates in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco.
Kate’s daughter, Lesley Adrienne, meanwhile, remained in Australia and secured roles in film and ‘leading lady’ status with Ben and John Fuller’s Dramatic Players (including as Ethel Derrick in Woman’s Calvary).
To be continued …
Endnotes
1. Whaite arrived in Australia in 1884 and found work assisting Walter Brookes Spong at the Brough and Boucicault Company. He was freelance from the 1890s and, with his partner George Dixon, established the Metropolitan Scenic Studio in Sydney in 1909. His most recent work was seen in a number of productions at the Tivoli, and Taylor and Coleman Pantomime Company’s Babes in the Wood.
2. The Buttonhole Fancy Costume Co. Ltd., located in the Catton Building, 199 Liverpool Street, Sydney, was a costume supplier operating in the 1920s and 1930s.
3. MacDonald was well know for his Dave in On Our Selection, but didn’t want to be remembered for that part alone. He has been responsible for other striking ‘types,’ notably that other turk Wintergreen, the rude and artless oyster fisherman who considers himself an eligible for the heroine’s hand in the famous Bailey and Grant success, What Happened to Mary. In 1918, he revealed his quality as a pantomime artist by undertaking successfully the role of the Demon of the Well in the Tait, Bailey and Grant pantomime of Jack and Jill.
