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."
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 anæmic 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.
A NAVAL REVELATION.
Edward Brown's official sheet,
Humble though his station,
Showed a record which the Fleet
Viewed with admiration.
Fifteen stainless summers bore
Fruit in serried cluster;
Conduct stripes he proudly wore,
One for every lustre.
Picture then the blank amaze
When this model rating
Suddenly developed traits
Most incriminating.
Faults in baser spirits deemed
Merely peccadillos
In that crystal mirror seemed
Vast as Biscay billows.