IN QUEST OF A PURPOSE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 421, 18 July 1947, Page 29

IN QUEST OF A PURPOSE

THEATRE IN AUSTRALIA. By Allan Aldous, MODERN ENGLISH LITERATURE. By Enid Moodie Heddle. (Quest Discussion Pamphlets, F. W. Cheshire Pty. Ltd., Melbourne). OT afraid to line up his ogres, whether large commercial companies or scatterbrained amateurs, and attempt, by standing.on the appropriate number of piled-up soap boxes, to reach a height of indignation from which he can fell them to the earth, Allan Aldous discusses the problems of the Australian drama (which broadly are the same as those we face in New Zealand) with a refreshing realism and gusto. He talks entertainingly of the past: in convict days the first theatre was closed by the ‘governor because when any family was seen to be at the play, its house was automatically robbed. He writes of the present with both fairness. and iconoclasm, and has enough faith in his fellow Australians to make proposals for a reformed future. Incidentally, it appears that Adelaide repertory amateurs alone in Australia possess their own theatre. His enthusiasm and commonsense permit us to forgive him the embarrassing virility of his style. " The pamphlet on Modern English Literature (which includes American) is not nearly so well handled by its author, whose -critical enterprise seems limited’ to reciting strings of writers’ names (many uneasy bedfellows here) and rather unconfident paraphrasings of the opinions of second-rate authorities. This new and interesting series of pamphlets on cultural or social topics is designed to appeal to members of adult education groups, and is in some degree a peace-time overflow from Australian army education: there were some signs of a similar development in this country.

David

Hall