"Mrs. Pretty and the Premier."
I am not sure that I didn't find Mr. Bourchier's "Foreword" or Apologia
(kindly given away with the programme) rather more entertaining than the
play itself. As long as the dramatist (a New Zealander) concerned
himself with the delightfully unconventional atmosphere of Antipodean
politics he was illuminating and very possibly veracious. But the
relations between the _Premier_ and the widow _Pretty_, which promised,
as the title hinted, to be the main attraction, were such as never could
have occurred on land or sea. It was impossible, with this farcical
element always obtruding itself, to take the political features of the
play seriously, as I gather that we were intended to do; and we got very
little help from Mr. Bourchier's own performance, which was frankly
humorous. In his brochure he tells us with great solemnity that he is
"more than pleased to think that the play may help to demonstrate to
those of an older civilisation how truly the best of the so-called
Labour politicians strive to serve their country and their fellow
men.... Premier 'Bill' demonstrates vividly enough that, heart and soul,
the Australian politician devotes himself to the uplifting of the great
Commonwealth." Mr. Bourchier's tongue may or may not have been in his
cheek when he penned these lofty sentiments, but anyhow it seemed to be
there during most of the play.
He is on safer ground when he tells us that "in curiously vivid and
pungent fashion this little play outlines the breezy freshness and the
originality of outlook which almost invariably characterise the
politicians and statesmen of the Prairie, the Veldt and the Bush, and
which more than anything else perhaps differentiates them from the men
of an older land, hampered as these latter often are by long and stately
traditions." Certainly, in the matter of addressing its Premier by a
familiar abbreviation of his Christian name (an authority who has
travelled in these parts assures Mr. Bourchier that he is "quite right:"
that "people would call this Premier 'Bill' in Australia") the new world
differs from the old. I cannot so much as contemplate the thought of Mr.
Asquith being addressed by the Minister Of Munitions as "Herb," or even
"Bert."
[Illustration: FIRST LOVE; OR THE JEUNE PREMIER.
_Bill the Premier_ Mr. Arthur Bourchier.
_Mrs. Pretty_ Miss Kyrle Bellew.]
But we have difficulties again with the Foreword (for I cannot get away
from it) when we come to the question of the hero's virility. In the
play his secretary says of him, "Bill's not a man, he's a Premier. A
kind of dynamo running the country at top speed." Yet the Foreword,
after citing this passage, goes on to insist upon his "tingling
humanity" and hinting at the need of such a type of manhood at the
present time. "After all," concludes Mr. Bourchier in a spasm of
uplift--"after all, what is the cry of the moment here in the heart of
the Empire, but for 'a Man-Give us a Man!'" But even if we reject the
secretary's estimate of his chief as a dynamo we still find a certain
deficiency of manhood in the anaemic indifference of the _Premier's_
attitude to women; an attitude, by the way, not commonly associated with
Mr. Bourchier's impersonations on the stage. _Mrs. Pretty's_ tastes are,
of course, her own affair, and we were allowed little insight into her
heart (if any), but I can only conclude that her choice was governed by
political rather than emotional considerations ("Let us remember Women
Have the Vote In Australia" is the finale of the Foreword) and that what
she wanted was a Premier rather than a Man.
Of the play itself one may at least say that it kept fairly off the
beaten track. There was novelty in its local colour, its unfamiliar
types and the episode, adroitly managed, of a pair of gloves employed to
muffle the division bell at the moment of a crisis on which the fate of
the Government depended. But the design was too small to fill the stage
of His Majesty's and it left me a little disappointed. I was content so
long as Mr. Bourchier was in sight, but the part of _Mrs. Pretty_ needed
something more than the rather conscious graces and airy drapery of Miss
Kyrle Bellew. The rest of the performance was sound but not very
exhilarating; and altogether, though I hope I am properly grateful for
any help towards the realisation of "Colonial conditions," I cannot
honestly say that _Mrs. Pretty_ and the _Premier_ has done very much for
me (as Mr. Bourchier hoped it would) by way of supplementing the thrill
of Anzac. O. S.
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