INTRODUCTION
This series of post is about the identity of the Australian actor. It is partly based on recent public lectures I recently delivered at the National Portrait Gallery and the National Film & Sound Archive, Canberra.
Currently, many Australian actors enjoy considerable national and international acclaim and success; however, whilst generally unknown and unacknowledged this has always been the case, from the colonial period to present day. Former posts have been about The Genesis of the Australian Actor, focusing on the convict performance of George Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer in 1789, and how many features of that performance have their resonance in the modern world and instrumental in the formulation of the character and identity of the Australian actor. This series is focused on highlighting some of the most exceptional 19th and early 20th Century Australian actors who achieved national and international success and played a significant part in the forming of the Australian actor. Due to time and space, this is highly selective and only gives a hint at the diverse and extraordinary range of Australian actors and their respective careers.
Shakespeare wrote that actors enact the abstract and brief chronicles of the times (Hamlet). Whilst this is true it also relates to other crucial aspects about actors and acting. Relatively, no actor is remembered beyond his and her own times, unless they achieve an iconic status that reaches beyond a particular career. This series is partly designed to draw attention to the great but now largely forgotten Australian actors of the past. Why should we care? T. S. Eliot was once challenged by a young student with this question – Why should we study people from the past when we know so much more than they did? ‘Exactly,’ replied Eliot,’ and they are what we know.’
ARTISTIC IDENTITY
Acting is a highly emotional art form, attracting and triggering strong responses. We often talk about actors in highly emotional terms – “I love that actor” – “I hate that actor” etc. Whilst there may be a number of reasons for responses, one is that a particular actor triggers and sparks an individuals imagination and others do not. This involves the appeal (or not) of a particular on-stage (or on-screen) persona, their unique artistic identity. This can be defined by examining three particular areas:
- TALENT
- TECHNIQUE
- TEMPERAMENT
TALENT – is what the actor is blessed with. It can be very difficult to define, as Constantine Stanislavsky stated, but we know it when we see it. Generalizing, an actor may have a great talent for comedy, or drama, and if particularly talented can do both. The most versatile actor is what in Musical Theatre terms is called the triple threat. This is the actor who can Sing, Dance and Act – such as Hugh Jackman. What is remarkable about the Australian actor is that many of them, past and current, enjoy this particular talent.
TECHNIQUE – is associated with skills. Just as there are many different types of actors, so too are there numerous techniques that assist the actor to unlock creativity when inspiration fails. In the US the so-called ‘method’ and its derivatives are naturalistically based and is something in which the American actor excels. All the contemporary Australian actors who have found success in the US and UK essentially have a technique and skills that complement this.
TEMPERAMENT – this is associated with particular stories and characters in which the particular actor is interested and excels, and in which complements their unique talent and technique. Subsequently, it is closely associated with a public persona – on-stage and off-stage – and is what we generally come to expect from a particular actor. This may be ‘personality’ based, in that it is essentially just one persona, or is ‘transformational’ and has radical variations. In US terms, is the actor a ‘movie star’ or an ‘actor’? They can also be both – such as Nicole Kidman. The question is – does the actor remain within a particular genre or ‘personality’, or does the actor work in numerous genres, aiming for ‘transformation’ – like Nicole Kidman.
As previously stated time and Space does not permit for me to go into great detail about the great Australian acting pioneers. There are, however, a number that I wish to highlight, who in many ways encapsulate and represent the evolution of the Australian actor throughout the 19th Century and early 20th Century. These are – Eliza Winstanley, George Coppin, J. C. Williamson, Maggie Moore, Nellie Stewart and Oscar Ashe. All these actors were triple threats (and more), and all enjoyed national and international acclaim and success.
ELIZA WINSTANLEY [O’FLAHERTY] (1818-1892)
Eliza Winstanley has the distinction of being the first Australian actor to achieve international success. She was the first Australian actress to appear and have a successful career in the UK and USA.
Eliza Winstanley was born in England in 1818 and emigrated with her family to Australia in 1833. Her father, William Winstanley, was a scene painter and decorator at Barnett Levey’s Theatre Royal, the first successful professional theatre in Sydney, and it was here that she made her professional debut in 1834. She married the actor-musician-writer Henry Charles O’Flaherty in 1841 and henceforward acted under her married name – Mrs. Eliza O’Flaherty. With her husband, she also worked as a theatre manager, primarily at the Olympic Theatre in Sydney. Along with another female Australian theatre pioneer, Anne Clarke (c. 1806-1847), Eliza Winstanley brought a new level of respectability and social acceptance of actors into the growing cities of Sydney, Melbourne, and Hobart.
Despite beginning in the operatic and musical theatre it soon became apparent that her particular talent and skills lay in the world of classical theatre and popular melodrama.The melodramas were of the blood-soaked horror kind, such as Madeline the Maniac, the title suggestive of the extreme emotional characters in which she excelled. She was the first to appear on the Australian stage as Shakespeare’s Desdemona in Othello, Rosalind in As You Like It, and Mistress Quickly in The Merry Wives of Windsor, as well as scoring considerable success as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet.
Hal Porter in his Stars of Australian Stage and Screen (1965) cites critical responses to ‘this tall, dark-eyed, lively, comely, and intelligent girl. With her “agreeable form”, “rich voice”, “graceful deportment”, and countenance susceptible to strong expression”, she quickly became Sydney’s favourite actress.’ She also attracted negative responses – ‘Miss Winstanley is too affected and making improper use of the letter “h” ‘, and “if she had not displayed such a wish to be in heroics she would have succeeded better’.
Eliza Winstanley’s bold theatrical and personal temperament is suggested by two incidents. In 1840, whilst she and her sister Anne were walking home after performing they were accosted by a group of young men who wore ‘cabbage tree hats’ as a symbol that they were ‘native’ born. The Winstanley girls were regarded as English and not ‘native’ born, and subsequently were seen as inferior. Previously they had been heckled numerous times with profanities whilst performing on-stage. This night a young teenager called Charles Davis threw his ‘cabbage tree hat’ at Anne Winstanley’s feet, which Eliza Winstanley then kicked out of the way. Davis then threatened to kick them 
‘for attempting to tread on the cabbage tree’. When this came before the authorities Davis changed his story, stating that he would have kicked them ‘if they were not women’. This incident was reported in the Sydney Monitor (1 January 1841) and was also dramatized for the Sydney stage by Henry Charles O’Flaherty, in a number of sketches – Thespis in Austalia: or The Stage in Danger – in which O’Flaherty appeared as ‘Knight of the Fiddle, and Champion of the fair Eliza’, stroking ‘the place where his beard should be’ and claiming that he received a black-eye in the incident. This was followed by a poem The Battle of the Cabbage Tree, which was a satiric parody of Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. It is possible that these dramatic pieces were part of O’Flaherty’s wooing of Eliza Winstanley as they were married the following month on 6 February 1841. (Australian Plays for the Colonies 1834-1899. Ed. Richard Fotheringham. University of Queensland Press. 2006. 49-50).
Another example of her independent spirit and temperament is the minor scandal she caused in 1842 when she appeared as Richard III in Shakespeare’s Richard III. Whilst it was not uncommon for women to play male roles in the early Australian theatre, mainly out of necessity, nonetheless, for many contemporaries, this was far too audacious for the times.
In 1846 she and her husband went to England, and after appearing with a number of provincial theatre companies she made her successful London debut at the Princess Theatre, London. In 1848 she also successfully toured the USA. She was the first Australian actress to appear and achieve success in the London and New York theatre. Back in London in 1850 she played leading roles with Charles Kean’s company at the Princess Theatre, establishing herself as one of London’s most popular and successful actresses of the time.
This success was due not only to her particular talent, skill, and temperament but also to the changing theatre scene in London. After considerable pressure, the 1843 Theatre Act dissolved the previous 200 years old monopoly of Covent Garden, Drury Lane, and the Haymarket theatres, subsequently allowing for more than 20 new theatres in London. One of these was Charles Kean’s Princess Theatre. Furthermore, the young Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert loved Kean’s epic productions of Shakespeare so much that they had a permanent box at the Princess Theatre. As Hal Porter states, Kean’s productions were ‘tastefully opulent, archaeologically correct to the minutest detail, with hundreds of supernumeraries including horses and hounds, spectacular scenery, and hand-picked casts in which Eliza Winstanley shone’. (Porter. 25).
In 1848 Queen Victoria revived the staging of a Royal Command Performance at Windsor Castle by invited companies. For Eliza Winstanley this led to another ‘Australian first’. Eliza Winstanley was the first Australian actress to take part in a Royal Command Performance; playing for the benefit of the young Queen Victoria and the royal family the role of Mrs. Malaprop in Sheridan’s The Rivals. She subsequently appeared in many other Royal Command performances; as well as touring extensively throughout the UK and the rest of the world. As Hal Porter states, ‘Possessed of inexhaustible vitality, without which no actress in that age of body-breaking stage labour and grisly traveling facilities could survive, she toured widely: Melbourne, Hobart, Launceston – playing the Cape as she came out, and Canada as she returned – France, Germany, Italy, and even Russia. enacting the Shakespearian roles by which she had earned her fame.’ (Porter. 25).
In 1865, at the age of 47 years old, she retired from the stage and took up writing, successfully publishing over the next 15 years 33 novels, as well as her own autobiography Shifting Scenes in Theatrical Life (1864). Significantly, most of her novels were set in Australia, including For Her Natural Life: A Tale of 1830 (1876), which was her ‘proto-feminist’ re-working of Marcus Clarke’s popular convict novel For the Term of His Natural Life (1870-72).
In 1880 Eliza Winstanely (O’Flaherty) she returned to Australia. After initially staying with her sister Anne in Geelong, she moved to Sydney, where she died of ‘diabetes and exhaustion’ in a house on Clarence Street December 2, 1882. She is buried in Waverly Cemetery, right next to Henry Lawson.
Eliza Winstanley [O’Flaherty] was quite an extraordinary actress, person, and pioneer. What is significant is not only her wide and diverse and internationally successful career but also what her artistic identity represents in regard to the character of the Australian actress. Independent, intelligent, strong, determined, expressive, bold, and, as Hal Porter stated, possessed of an inexhaustible vitality. Such characteristics could equally apply to many, and many of those are modern Australian actresses – but Eliza Winstanley was the first.
TONY KNIGHT
Lieutenant Watkin Tench (1753-1833) was a Marine officer with the ‘First Fleet’ and provided one of the few eye-witness accounts of this production of The Recruiting Officer. Tench wrote, ‘That every opportunity of escape from the dreariness and dejection of our situation should be eagerly embraced will not be wondered at’ (Trench – A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson in New South Wales (1793). 25. Tench’s comment reflects the genuine concern and fragile position that faced the ‘First Fleeters’ in establishing the colony. There were only copies of two English plays that accompanied the First Fleet – George Farquhar’s popular satiric comedy The Recruiting Officer (1706) and the sentimental The Tragedy of Jane Shore (1714) by Poet Laureate Nicholas Rowe (1674-1718). Considering the difficulties, the ‘dreariness and dejection’ felt by Tench and one can assume by many others, Governor Arthur Phillip wisely chose Farquhar’s comedy to honour King George III’s birthday.
It is a ‘war play’ dealing with the character of Philoctetes and the ownership of a master weapon – Heracles’ Bow and Arrows – that is needed to end the Trojan War. At the time when Sophocles wrote Philoctetes and it was first performed Athens was entering the final years of the decades long and exhausting Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE). Whilst achieving a number of military successes and the suppression of a couple of rebellions, nonetheless, Athens and the so-called Athenian League were also facing considerable international problems and defeats, particularly by the Persians as well as the ever increasing power of Carthage and the Carthaginians. Philoctetes may be considered a ‘war play’ but it is also a moral and ethical drama involving ‘keeping the peace’. Furthermore, it shows how in times of war a problematic person of value may be discarded and abandoned for the sake of personal ambition in the guise of action for the ‘greater good’. This hypocritical lie and deceit is exposed and denounced – but only after a long period of time, which is a lesson in itself – and only by someone who has the ethical and moral courage to stand up to the force of the majority.
are a couple of these plays that hold a significant place in Australian theatre history. 
This includes Euripides’ Medea (431 BCE) and Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex (429 BCE). Medea was a big international success for Australian actors Dame Judith Anderson and Zoe Caldwell; Oedipus Rex was directed by Tyrone Guthrie for Sydney’s Old Tote Theatre Company in the 1960s and was a landmark production not only for Guthrie, but also for the fledgling Old Tote Theatre Company.
This article on Thomas Otway’s Venice Preserv’d is a continuation of the series devoted to ‘neglected’ plays.
I first was introduced to Venice Preserv’d whilst a young directing student at The Drama Centre, London. I was assigned the play by Christopher Fettes to work with a student designer from the Motley Design Course, under the auspices and guidance of Glen Byam Shaw (1904-1986) and Margaret (‘Percy’) Harris (1904-2000) no less. Amazing when I think back on it. Furthermore, it was through working on Venice Preserv’d with the students and teachers at the Motley Design Course that I discovered the work of Edward Gordon Craig who had done numerous stage design concepts for the play. Looking at more modern stage designs for Venice Preserv’d it is interesting noticing Craig’s great influence.
Set in Venice in the late 17th Century Venice Preserv’d is a play about love, death, friendship and betrayal. It is a highly political play involving intrigue, rebellion, corruption and deceit, encapsulated by its subtitle – Venice Preserv’d, or A Plot Discovered. Whilst possible inspired by the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, nonetheless, at the time it was first produced in 1685 it was seen as an attack on the despised royalist government of the recently deceased Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury (1621-83). The elderly, scurrilous and decadent Venetian Senator, Antonio, was regarded as a satiric portrait of Shaftesbury. Antonio’s scenes with the courtesan Aquiliana, with his constant referring to his ‘Nicky-Nacky’, whilst hilariously funny also caused controversy, especially considering that ‘Nicky Nacky’ was contemporary slang for a woman’s genitalia. Furthermore, a century later, in 1795, performances of Venice Preserv’d at Richard Brinsely Sheridan‘s Drury Lane Theatre, featuring John Philip Kemble and Sarah Siddons, were involved in notorious ‘theatre riots’ and other disturbances in the wake of the American War of Independence and the French Revolution. The play was seen as ‘disgraceful to public morals, and so inimical to order and government’. The play continued to provoke strong reactions – an American production was banned in 1798, and there were further public demonstrations when the play was revived in 1809 and again in 1848, the year of numerous riots and rebellions throughout Europe.
For centuries Venice Preserv’d held equal status with the most popular and esteemed plays by Shakespeare. Unfortunately, Thomas Otway (1652-85) did not benefit from the success of his play, nor of his other success The Orphan (1680). Otway fell in love with Elizabeth Barry (1658-1713), for whom he wrote most of his main female characters, 
including Belvidera. Mrs Barry, however, did not return his love, preferring the advantageous attention of John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1647-80). Tragically, Thomas Otway died in abject poverty. There is an apocryphal story about his death first noted by the actor Theophilus Cibber (son of Colley Cibber) in his Lives of the Poets. The destitute and starving Otway was begging near Tower Hill. When he received a guinea from a passing stranger he rushed to the nearest baker, and due to his haste in eating choked on his first bite and died.
In the 18th Century the play was so popular that audience members knew respective speeches by heart, just like today some of Shakespeare’s most famous speeches are known (e.g. ‘To be or not to be”). James Quin (1693-1766), David Garrick (1717-79) and later John Philip Kemble (1757-1823) respectively played Jaffier for many years. Susanna Maria Cibber (1714-76) and Sarah Siddons (1755-1823) scored big hits playing Belvidera. In many ways Sarah Siddons‘ Belvidera became the centre of the play and a major reason for its continued popularity. 
Sarah Siddon’s Belvidera took on full responsibility for the fates of Jaffier and Pierre. How Sarah Siddon’s performed the final scene in which Belvidera goes mad and dies was recorded in 1808 – ‘her ravings, wild, terrible, desperate, were rendered more awful and impressive by the strong exertions in which her mind struggled from time to time to recover its balance and the evanescent glimpse of reason which glimmered doubtfully through the darkness of the soul’. When Sarah Siddon’s Belvidera died, ‘the terrible agonies of her death closed a representation of suffering nature almost too real and too dreadful to be borne’.
In the 19th Century Eliza O’Neill (1791-1872) and Fanny Kemble (1809-1893) respectively scored considerable success as Belvidera. Audiences rose to their feet and cheered Eliza O’Neill’s Belvidera’s death scene. Fanny Kemble wrote that she that she was so overwhelmed by Belvidera that she had to be stopped from rushing screaming from the theatre (bit O.T.T. maybe). Edmund Kean (1787-1833) and Sir Henry Irving (1838-1905) were also notable Jaffier’s in respective productions of Venice Preserv’d.
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON (1835-1915) was a popular Victorian novelist, her most acclaimed and successful work being the ‘sensation novel’ Lady Audley’s Secret (1862). Initially published in serial form, the novel proved so popular that it was almost immediately adapted for the stage. There were a number of adaption, however, the most lasting and performed one was by the comedian Colin Henry Hazelwood (1823-1875); an irony in itself.
There are a number of fascinating things about Lady Audley’s Secret, not least its theatrical history and influence but also a rather fine connection to Australian history. Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s elder brother, Edward Braddon (1829-1904), immigrated to Australia in 1845 and eventually became Premier of Tasmania from 1894-99, and was a Member of the First Australian Parliament. The suburb of Brandon in the Australian Capital Territory, and the Tasmanian electorate of Braddon are named after Sir Edward Braddon. However, our story lays with his sister and the ‘sensation’ of Lady Audley’s Secret.
This is highly apparent in Disney’s Maleficent (2014) in which the classic evil witch, although wonderfully played by Angelina Jollie, is given a relatively predictable ‘back story’ that makes her subsequent actions ‘understandable’ due to be the victim of male domination. This romanticised reduction concerns me a little, as it does with male villains, such as the vampire, as it seems to suggest that real evil, real evil people, male and female, don’t really exists, and that everyone and all evil actions are relatively ‘understandable’ – they are actually ‘nice’ people underneath all this. Rubbish. Real evil, real evil people, male and female, do exits, and their actions rather than being ‘understandable’ are repugnant, destructive, and – well – evil – and should be denounced. The potential danger of hypocrisy, and the gullibility of accepting ‘wolves in sheep clothing’ is remarkably pronounced; not all people are ‘understandable’ or ‘nice’.
However, the above characters cited above are not really those that sit within the genre of sensation drama. As previously stated, and in reference to Lady Audley, sensation drama and the femme fatale really exists within a relatively domestic setting and not in the world of fantasy. This makes the modern femme fatale figure particularly dangerous. I am, however, hard put to find modern examples; although arguably Robin Wright’s Claire Underwood in the US TV series House of Cards (2013-2017) falls into the femme fatale archetype. As does Nurse Ratched in Dale Wasserman’s continuing popular play adaptation of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1963). Furthermore, whilst Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth may remain the most ever-present femme fatale I doubt very much if we will ever see again Ann Downs in Leonard Kastle’s The Shrike, or Lady Audley in Lady Audley’s Secret. Nonetheless, you can always read and see these works, and the femme fatale remains, in various forms, a vital archetype in modern and classical drama – long may she reign.
Jean Giraudoux (1882-1944) was a major French writer in the early 20th Century, particularly in the period between WW1 and WW2. Many of his plays were international successes including Amphitryon 38 (1929), The Enchanted (1933), The Trojan War Will Not Take Place( 1935), Electra (1937), and particularly Ondine (1939) and The Madwoman of Chaillot (1943). 
The Madwoman of Chaillot is a case in point. Written in 1943 but not performed until 1945, this is truly a wonderful play – and very relevant for today.
The play was a considerable success when it was first produced, and subsequently was performed in London, New York, and many other parts of the world. In 1969 Jerry Herman, Jerome Lawrence, and Robert E. Lee turned the play into the musical Dear World, which starred Angela Lansbury. 
With Alfian Sa-at’s and Marcia Vanderstraaten’s HOTEL (2015) about to open here in Adelaide as part of the Oz-Asia Festival I thought it opportune to write something about Alfian Sa’at, one of Singapore’s best modern playwrights. Most people in Australia may not be aware of Alfian Sa’at and his work. This is an attempt to slightly address that. He is an exceptional playwright, poet, and from my all to brief dealings with him, a really great guy as well. I first became aware of Alfian Sa’at’s work whilst I was living in Singapore. During that time I was fortunate enough to see a number of his plays being performed by Singapore’s terrific Wild Rice theatre company, led by another exceptional person, Ivan Heng, the Artistic Director and co-founder of Wild Rice. The productions I saw included Dreamplay (2000), which is Part One of Alfian Sa’at’s beautiful Asian Boys Trilogy (2000-07), Cooling Off Day (2011), Cook a Pot of Curry (2013), and my personal favourite, the intriguing The Optic Trilogy (2001). All these are terrific plays and make an excellent introduction to the world of Alfian Sa’at.
The Asian Boys Trilogy is something that could be seen during Sydney’s annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and/or Adelaide’s Feast Festival. This is a terrific ‘gay’ play that is not only enlightening about ‘gay’ life in South-East Asia, past and present, but is also very entertaining. I have only seen Part One – Dreamplay, which is theatrically influenced by Strindberg’s Dreamplay, and was directed by Ivan Heng and featured the wonderful Singapore actor and dear friend Galeb Goh, amongst other excellent Singapore actors.
Cooling Off Day (2011) was actually the first Alfian Sa’at play I saw. It is a series of monologues based around the then recent Singapore General Election. I didn’t know much about the politics of Singapore so this was a terrific introduction. Whilst some of it went way over my head and was very local specific, nonetheless, it was extremely entertaining and enlightening. I loved the structure of the piece, a snap-shot of Singapore at a particular and politically important moment in time, the different voices and perspectives, a cross section of Singaporean characters and society, and the vital and engaging performances by the respective actors. It was also through this play and production that I became aware of the delights of Singlish.
I tried many times to speak Singlish, much to the amusement of my Singapore friends. I even had a couple of Singlish dictionaries, and would fervently implore my Singapore students and friends to speak Singlish as I just loved hearing it. Unfortunately, I never got the hang of it – lah. Friends would just giggle at my attempts, my problem centring on differences in stress. Australians follow our English-speaking heritage with an iambic word/vowel stress (Dee-DUM), weak-strong; Singaporeans follow their English-speaking heritage with a trochaic word/vowel stress (DUM-Dee), strong-weak. I couldn’t break my Australian cultural habit. Instead of saying the common ‘CAN lah’, I would say ‘Can LAH’, which generally produced shrieks of laughter. Nonetheless, I was acutely aware that whenever Singlish was spoken in the theatre, as in Alfian’s plays, it was like an electric current suddenly shot through the audience, making them excited and animated – it was fantastic! This was most apparent in Alfian Sa’at’s delightful domestic comedy Cook a Pot of Curry – I didn’t understand half of it, but it didn’t matter, I just enjoyed the vitality of the show, and the joy of the Singapore audience as it would roar with laughter at recognition of themselves and their unique colloquial language. I am sure Hotel will have some Singlish in it – can’t wait to hear it again.
As previously mentioned, my favourite amongst Alfian’s plays is The Optic Trilogy. This is a two-hander between an unnamed man and woman in three separate scenes. I remember this Wild Rice production clearly, which featured dear friend and colleague the wonderful Brendon Fernandez, and how from the very first scene set in a hotel room I was absolutely transfixed – by the drama, the complexity, the language, and the brilliant performances. This is a play about deceit, full of poetic metaphors, and is often very funny. It has been performed in a number of other countries, but not, as yet, in Australia. This is the play that I would love to do in Australia. I can only encourage you to get hold of it, as it is published, and read it. But please – let me do it! Haha!.
Arthur Pinero (1855-1933) was one of the most successful British playwrights of the late 19th Century. His most popular works include – The Magistrate (1885), The Schoolmistress (1886), Dandy Dick (1887), The Second Mrs Tanqueray (1893), and in particular his wonderful Trelawny of the ‘Well’s that is the most consistently revived of Pinero’s work.
Arthur Pinero’s The Second Mrs Tanqueray (1893) was one of the most controversial plays of the late 19th Century and early 20th Century. It is what was known as a ‘problem play’ in that it dealt with the moral dilemma of a ‘woman with a past’. In other words she had relationships with men outside the marriage bed. The play was also famous as being the one that made Mrs Patrick Campbell a ‘star’. The Second Mrs Tanqueray maintained its relative popularity in the first half of the 20th Century. The American actress Tallulah 
Bankhead scored considerable success with on the New York stage early in her career in the 1920s. The play has also been filmed three times – two ‘silent’ film versions, a British one in 1916, and an Italian one in 1922, and another British version in 1952 with Pamela Brown as Paula Tanqueray and Virginia McKenna as Ellean Tanqueray. Subsequently, however, this once very popular play has slid into relative obscurity, with a notable National Theatre revival in 1983.
In Pinero’s play, Mrs Paula Jarman, who was previously Mrs Paula Dartry, is a notorious London ‘hostess’ who has married the very respectable Mr Aubrey Tanqueray, becoming his second wife after the death of his very religious first wife. Complicating matters there is his daughter Ellean Tanqueray who being estranged from her father for years and brought up in a convent now comes to live with her father at his country estate with the second Mrs Tanqueray. Things are not going well in this household. Paula is acutely aware that she has been snubbed by the local gentry, nor is she and her step-daughter hitting it off – both are at fault, and Paula is acutely jealous and paranoid about her husband’s affection for his daughter. The sheltered and inexperienced Ellean is taken to Paris by an old family friend and falls in love with a young respectable army officer, Captain Hugh Ardale. It is all rather sudden, but her father doesn’t object to the match, until Paula reveals that in a previous life she and Hugh Ardale were lovers. The result is a tragedy – Paula, unable to shake her past, commits suicide.
The early 1890s saw the production of numerous ‘problem plays’, as well as novels, involving ‘fallen women’, exemplified by George Moore‘s wonderful novel Esther Walters (1894). The so-regarded ‘problem’ of a ‘woman with a past’ is integral to Oscar Wilde‘s Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) and An Ideal Husband (1895), as well as George Bernard Shaw‘s Mrs Warren’s Profession (1894). It is quite possible that Shaw was inspired by The Second Mrs Tanqueray, not just because he admired the character of Paula Tanqueray but also because it was played by Mrs Patrick Campbell whom Shaw adored. Shaw’s play, however, whilst written in this period 1890-1895 was not actually performed until 1902 due to its subject matter.
Shaw adds a wonderful caution in regards to reading the play in contrast to actually seeing it. The reader ‘must not expect the play to be as imposing in the library as it was on the stage. Its merit there was relative to the culture of the playgoing public’. This may be an all too common reason why some of the older plays become neglected, in that they do not read as well as they play.
Shaw’s criticism of Pinero, in that he is ‘no interpreter of character, but simply an adroit describer of people as the ordinary man sees and judges them’, is the problem – on page when reading Pinero. It could be, however, a completely different story if Pinero (and others) are actually seen and experienced on-stage. I suspect it is. Rather than being ‘old fashioned’ I think that The Second Mrs Tanqueray, in the right hands, could be wonderfully re-invented for modern audiences. After all, the essential drama between a relatively priggish and censorious 18 year old step-daughter dealing with a glamourous and beautiful step-mother with a notorious past is still the stuff of great drama.
