THE KELLY GANG

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 204, 21 May 1943, Page 14

THE KELLY GANG

NED KELLY: A Play. By Douglas Stewart. Angus and Robertson, Sydney. "\WVATCH Douglas Stewart" the knowing ones have been saying for a year or two, "and don’t forget that he is a New Zealander." But he will not let us forget it. In the middle of this so completely Australian drama he makes on2 of the characters say You make me uneasy, balancing there on the table, Like an earthquake zbout to begin: It is true that earthquakes have been registered in Australia, but to make an Australian girl think of one during an attack of nerves is like making a Laplander think of a log fire after a day on the ice. It sounds like home, too, when we hear the moreporks, but in this case there is a good Australian reason. And in any case those are details, The question is: Do the Kellys come to lite again? If they do, it does not matter much what method Stewart uses, or with what men and women and birds they consort while they are here, But it is not an easy question to answer. Somebody comes to life, unless we are as jumpy as "the traps" were when Ned was riding; somebody who holds us while we are listening to him, and who lingers in the imagination afterwards. But is it Ned himself? Or Dan? Or Joe Byrne or Steve Hart? It is a little difficult to think so; and if what Stewart has created are romantic impressions of the gang, it would have been better to stick to simple realism. But his trouble was that there is a Kelly gang legend. They never injured or insulted a woman. They were men with a grievance. The settlers secretly admired them. They never wanted to take life. And so on, All this Stewart had to convey or thought he had, and there was his own Poetic imagination besides. So when Norman Lindsay calls this "a truly great (Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) poetic drama," there is only one word ix. his tribute that is absurd, It is not great by any fest at all, and it is very unlikely that Stewart himself thinks it is. But it is interesting; arresting; in many respects memorable. Even its absurdities--Ned Kelly in the middle of a hold-up making a speech of nearly two pages, four policemen going to bed and to sleep with the bushrangers not far away outside-even these are given a kind of poetic justification in’ the text, whatever the effect might be on the stage. The .ruth seems to be that Ctewart sat down and wrote a poem about life and society and resurrected the Kellys to "put it across." Although it is not a great poem, it has it authentic moments, and Ned and Byrne are authentic enough not to be easily forgotten.