Daybreak (play)

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Daybreak
Written by Catherine Shepherd
CharactersSimon Martel
Caroline Martel
Jeanne Martel
Mrs Carmichael
Francis Gillan
Captain North
Lt Prideaux
Phoebe Moon
Rufus Blainey
Mrs Turner
Mrs Moss
Ellen
Beam
Date premieredAugust, 1938 [1]
Place premieredTheatre Royal, Hobart
Original languageEnglish
SubjectHobart
Genredrama
SettingColonial Hobart

Daybreak is a 1938 Australian play by Catherine Shepherd. [2] [3]

Contents

It won the Melbourne National Theatre Movement's Australia-wide three-act play competition, and is on the Playwrights' Advisory Board's list of recommended plays. [4]

The play was published in 1942. It was one of the most successful plays to come from a Tasmanian author. [5] [6]

Leslie Rees wrote of the play in his history of Australian drama, calling it "Catherine Shepherd's most considerable "Australian" drama... Perhaps Daybreak lacks the scope of a "full-length" play and has a certain starchiness, along with its fine feeling, but is a worthy conception, a criticism of smug inflexible authority rather than of deliberate tyranny." [7]

One critic felt it was "heavily indebted" to The Barretts of Wimpole Street . [8]

Production History

The play was given a reading in 1937 and performed in Hobart in 1938. [9]

Adaptations

The play was adapted into a 60 minute version for radio in 1938 (as part of the ABC's Australian Radio Drama Week [10] ), 1939, 1940, [11] 1944 (when it was the first play broadcast by the ABC from Newcastle [12] ) 1948 and 1951. [13]

The 1938 radio production was the first time the work was produced professionally. There had been a reading in 1937. [14]

Premise

In 1830 colonial Hobart, Simon Martel is the father of two girls, Caroline and Jeanne. Simon is a harsh man devoted to religion, while Jeanne is more idealistic. Jeanne falls in love with an Englishman called Francis, who is determined to build a utopia with some convicts. Simon arranges for Francis to be expelled from Van Dieman's Land. Jeanne persuades Francis to let her run away with him. There is a subplot about two servants of Simon, Phoebe and Rufus Bellamy, falling in love and asking Simon for permission to get their ticket of leave, but Simon refuses, over Jeanne's objections, insisting that convicts are to be punished.

Jeanne leaves with Francis but we find out later it was a disaster. The ship they were meant to flee on was shipwrecked, there were clashes with troops in which Francis was mortally wounded. Simon is killed by Bellamy, driven mad by Simon's punishments. This is witnessed by Caroline. Jeanne successfully persuades Caroline to say she saw nothing, so Bellamy will not be executed. [15]

Reception

Reviewing a 1942 published edition of the play the Sydney Morning Herald called it "outstanding... every word fits the particular character, and every word tells-while the action, too, is a unity and spares the theatrical tricks and sentimental appeals." [16]

Reviewing a 1939 production at the Independent Theatre the Sydney Morning Herald said "The dramatic thread is not always taut enough to sustain suspense or build up a really gripping climax, but this in no way destroys the play, but it takes from it just that urgency and note of tragedy which would have lifted it on to a higher level of dramatic achievement." [17]

Reviewing a 1939 radio production Wireless Weekly said "The construction of the play is slightly rambling, and until it is well under way one is not quite certain of the sympathies of its central character. ... But Miss Shepherd is a playwright with ideas, and for that much shall be forgiven her...The story has plenty of light and shade. It has a little humor, a little horror, and plenty of emotion. Yet it carries conviction." [18]

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References

  1. ↑ "Good Play Well Produced". The Mercury . Vol. CXLIX, no. 21, 117. Tasmania, Australia. 1 August 1938. p. 5. Retrieved 24 July 2023– via National Library of Australia.
  2. ↑ "The Drama in Ausctralia". The West Australian . Vol. 55, no. 16, 553. Western Australia. 22 July 1939. p. 5. Retrieved 24 July 2023– via National Library of Australia.
  3. ↑ "Plays of the Air— Catherine Shepherd", ABC Weekly, 2 (22), Sydney: ABC, 1 June 1940, nla.obj-1370701369, retrieved 5 September 2023– via Trove
  4. ↑ "PLAYWRIGHTS OF AUSTRALIA FLAIR FOR CHARACTER STUDY", The Wireless Weekly: The Hundred per Cent Australian Radio Journal, 35 (30), Sydney: Wireless Press, July 27, 1940, retrieved 5 September 2023– via Trove
  5. ↑ ""Oliv[?]" Looks at Life Topics of the Moment from a Woman's Point of View". The Mercury . Vol. CLXVI, no. 24, 010. Tasmania, Australia. 20 November 1947. p. 10. Retrieved 24 July 2023– via National Library of Australia.
  6. ↑ "Play on Tasmania Well Received". The Mercury . Vol. CLXXIV, no. 25, 942. Tasmania, Australia. 15 February 1954. p. 6. Retrieved 24 July 2023– via National Library of Australia.
  7. ↑ Rees, Leslie (1953). Towards an Australian Drama. p. 117.
  8. ↑ "Between You and Me and the Microphone", The Wireless Weekly: The Hundred per Cent Australian Radio Journal, 31 (22), Sydney: Wireless Press, June 3, 1938, nla.obj-714445799, retrieved 5 September 2023– via Trove
  9. ↑ "REPERTORY PLAY". The Mercury . Vol. CXLIX, no. 21, 118. Tasmania, Australia. 2 August 1938. p. 2. Retrieved 24 May 2024– via National Library of Australia.
  10. ↑ "Australian Radio Drama Week Commissions Festival —May 8–15", The Wireless Weekly: The Hundred per Cent Australian Radio Journal, 31 (17), Sydney: Wireless Press, April 29, 1938, retrieved 5 September 2023– via Trove
  11. ↑ "Plays of the Air — Catherine Shepherd", ABC Weekly, 2 (22), Sydney, 1 June 1940, retrieved 24 July 2023– via Trove
  12. ↑ ABC Weekly, vol. 6, Sydney, 15 April 1944, retrieved 5 September 2023– via Trove{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  13. ↑ "A.B.C. Radio Plays", ABC Weekly, 13 (1), Sydney, 6 January 1951, retrieved 5 September 2023– via Trove
  14. ↑ "MUSIC AND DRAMA TIBBETT BEGINS TOUR THIS MONTH". The Mercury . Vol. CXLVIII, no. 21, 026. Tasmania, Australia. 15 April 1938. p. 6. Retrieved 24 May 2024– via National Library of Australia.
  15. ↑ "Repertory Play". The Mercury . Vol. CXLIX, no. 21, 118. Tasmania, Australia. 2 August 1938. p. 2. Retrieved 24 July 2023– via National Library of Australia.
  16. ↑ "AUSTRALIAN PLAYS". The Sydney Morning Herald . No. 32, 689. New South Wales, Australia. 3 October 1942. p. 6. Retrieved 24 May 2024– via National Library of Australia.
  17. ↑ ""DAYBREAK."". The Sydney Morning Herald . No. 31, 718. New South Wales, Australia. 28 August 1939. p. 5. Retrieved 24 May 2024– via National Library of Australia.
  18. ↑ Australasian Radio Relay League. (June 21, 1939), "Tasmania In Penal Days", The Wireless Weekly: The Hundred per Cent Australian Radio Journal, Sydney: Wireless Press, nla.obj-725841888, retrieved 24 May 2024– via Trove
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