From Australia

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 913, 8 February 1957, Page 13

From Australia

TRE Tintookies, the Australian musical play for marionettes heard from 1YA last Saturday, was an odd affair, old-fashioned in the way a great deal of native Australian theatre seems to me to be, yet, in its fashion, not without a certain attractiveness. Although it is probably very unneighbourly to say so, I feel that corny and parishpumpy qualities are to be found in many Australian literary products. Certainly, parts of The Tintookies sounded like an

Edwardian children’s fairy-play. This impression came mainly from Kurt Herweg’s music, which was utterly without distinction, and the lyrics, somewhat lumberingly imitating old-style musical comedy, with Savoy echoes-the whole resembling a tenth carbon of Toad of Toad Hall. There was a genuine charm in the Tintookies themselves, who had renounced magic for the dubious joys of civilisation, and in the three animal heroes. But besides the usual Theatre of Music show, The Tintookies sounded unsophisticated to the point of banality. Perhaps Australian folk-lore doesn’t travel well. Yet the work was, at least, a try: we shall be in a sounder position to look disdainfully at indigenous transTasman theatre when we have some-thing-anything-of our own.