In Beauty It Is Finished is a three-act play by mid-twentieth century Australian playwright George Landen Dann. It was his first major play. [1]
In Beauty It Is Finished follows the story of Marion, a young white woman who lives for alternating years in Brisbane and with her parents on Moreton Island. The only other inhabitants of the island are Indigenous Australians and a lonely fisherman. Controversially, Marion begins a love affair with a "half-caste" boy named Tom. The play follows the effects the affair has on the surrounding family and community. In Beauty It Is Finished deals with themes of racism, identity, isolation and community as well as social expectations and ideals. [2]
Moreton Island can be seen from the shore of Sandgate where Dann lived. Dann took his character inspiration from the Ngugi people from Moreton Island. When the play was written in the 1930s, Queensland Indigenous Australians lived under the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897. This act affected the Indigenous population of Queensland with forced relocation to missions, the administration of Indigenous employment and wages as well as controlling permission to marry.
On Moreton Island the Indigenous population had been subject to many of the consequences of colonialism, including widespread disease and massacres. Many Indigenous Australians were moved to missions or sent to other islands or Brisbane. Many "half-caste" people lived in unauthorised fringe settlements with extremely poor conditions. These injustices prompted Dann to write about Indigenous Australians and their treatment by the government in his plays.
In Beauty It Is Finished won the Brisbane Repertory Theatre Society's national playwriting competition in 1931.
For its premiere production for the Society at Brisbane's His Majesty's Theatre in 1931, Barbara Sisley was producer and director. On 16 July The Courier-Mail stated "It was selected unanimously on its dramatic values, and because of its earnestness of purpose. It is an intense play, relying for its power on the reactions of its characters to intense situations and deals with the lives of persons living on an island off the Queensland coast." [3]
In Beauty It Is Finished was a highly controversial play at the time of its release, receiving many negative newspaper reviews. One local publication even claimed the play encapsulated 'sordid' content! Dann's play deals with inter-racial romance and friendship. Christian communities and newspapers discouraged people from seeing or engaging with the play. Despite this, however, the play attracted full houses.
The following year, the play was rejected by the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. On 28 December 1932 Dann was sent a letter explaining that the play had been rejected for reasons to do with the content. [4]
In 1977, from 25 March to 23 April, Brisbane's La Boite Theatre Company produced In Beauty It Is Finished as part of the season Three Australian Plays. Dann died in June 1977. [5]
Queensland is a state in northeastern Australia, the second-largest and third-most populous of the Australian states. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, southwest and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and the Pacific Ocean; to its north is the Torres Strait, separating the Australian mainland from Papua New Guinea, and the Gulf of Carpentaria to the north-west. With an area of 1,723,030 square kilometres (665,270 sq mi), Queensland is the world's sixth-largest subnational entity; it is larger than all but 16 countries. Due to its size, Queensland's geographical features and climates are diverse, including tropical rainforests, rivers, coral reefs, mountain ranges and sandy beaches in its tropical and sub-tropical coastal regions, as well as deserts and savanna in the semi-arid and desert climatic regions of its interior.
Brisbane is the capital of the state of Queensland and the third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of approximately 2.6 million. Brisbane lies at the centre of South East Queensland, which includes several other regional centres and cities. The central business district is situated within a peninsula of the Brisbane River about 15 km (9 mi) from its mouth at Moreton Bay. Brisbane is located in the hilly floodplain of the Brisbane River Valley between Moreton Bay and the Taylor and D'Aguilar mountain ranges. It sprawls across several local government areas, most centrally the City of Brisbane. The demonym of Brisbane is Brisbanite.
Moreton Bay is a bay located on the eastern coast of Australia 14 kilometres (8.7 mi) from central Brisbane, Queensland. It is one of Queensland's most important coastal resources. The waters of Moreton Bay are a popular destination for recreational anglers and are used by commercial operators who provide seafood to market.
Moreton Island (Mulgumpin) is an island on the eastern side of Moreton Bay on the coast of South East Queensland, Australia. The Coral Sea lies on the east coast of the island. Moreton Island lies 58 kilometres (36 mi) northeast of the Queensland capital, Brisbane. 98% of the island is contained within a national park and a popular destination for day trippers, four wheel driving, camping, recreational angling and whale watching and a 75-minute ferry ride from Brisbane. It is the third largest sand island in the world. Together with Fraser Island, Moreton Island forms the largest sand structure in the world. It was the traditional country of the Ngugi before settlement.
North Stradbroke Island, colloquially Straddie or North Straddie, is an island that lies within Moreton Bay in the Australian state of Queensland, 30 kilometres (19 mi) southeast of the centre of Brisbane. Originally there was only one Stradbroke Island but in 1896 it split into North Stradbroke Island and South Stradbroke Island separated by the Jumpinpin Channel. The Quandamooka people are the traditional owners of North Stradbroke island.
Redland City, better known as the Redlands and formerly known as Redland Shire, is a local government area and a part of the Brisbane metropolitan area in South East Queensland, Australia. With a population of 159,222 in June 2021, the city is spread along the southern coast of Moreton Bay, covering 537.2 square kilometres (207.4 sq mi). Its mainland borders the City of Brisbane to the west and north-west, and Logan City to the south-west and south, while its islands are situated north of the City of Gold Coast.
The recorded History of Brisbane dates from 1799, when Matthew Flinders explored Moreton Bay on an expedition from Port Jackson, although the region had long been occupied by the Yugara and Turrbal aboriginal tribes. The town was conceived initially as a penal colony for British convicts sent from Sydney. Its suitability for fishing, farming, timbering, and other occupations, however, caused it to be opened to free settlement in 1838. The town became a municipality in 1859 and a consolidated metropolitan area in 1924. Brisbane encountered major flooding disasters in 1893, 1974, 2011 and 2022. Significant numbers of US troops were stationed in Brisbane during World War II. The city hosted the 1982 Commonwealth Games, World Expo 88, and the 2014 G20 Brisbane summit.
Peel Island is a small heritage-listed island located in Moreton Bay, east of Brisbane, in South East Queensland, Australia. The island is a locality within the local government area of Redland City and a national park named Teerk Roo Ra National Park and Conservation Park.
The history of Queensland encompasses both a long Aboriginal Australian presence as well as the more recent periods of European colonisation and as a state of Australia. Before being charted and claimed for the Kingdom of Great Britain by Lieutenant James Cook in 1770, the coast of north-eastern Australia was explored by Dutch and French navigators. Queensland separated from the Colony of New South Wales as a self-governing Crown colony in 1859. In 1901 it became one of the six founding states of Australia.
St Helena Island is a heritage-listed island in Moreton Bay, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It is 21 kilometres (13 mi) east of Brisbane and 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) east of the mouth of the Brisbane River. Originally used as a prison, it is now a national park. Local Australian Aboriginals called the island Noogoon but it was renamed St Helena after an Aboriginal man named Napoleon was exiled there in 1827. The island is visible from the mainland, particularly the suburbs of Wynnum, Manly and Lota. It has its own permanent water supply, a spring in the centre of the island. Many migratory birds use the island as a watering hole; it forms part of the Moreton Bay and Pumicestone Passage Important Bird Area, so identified by BirdLife International because it supports large numbers of migratory waders, or shorebirds.
The Colony of Queensland was a colony of the British Empire from 1859 to 1901, when it became a State in the federal Commonwealth of Australia on 1 January 1901. At its greatest extent, the colony included the present-day State of Queensland, the Territory of Papua and the Coral Sea Islands Territory.
Thomas Welsby was an Australian businessman, author, politician, and sportsman based in Queensland. He was a Member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly from 1911 to 1915.
Matthew Ryan is an Australian playwright, theatre director and screenwriter.
Caroline Chisolm is an Australian stage play by George Landen Dann. It debuted in 1939 as The Second Moses then was revised under its new title.
Fountains Beyond is a 1942 Australian stage play by George Landen Dann. It is his best known work.
George Landen Dann was an Australian playwright, writer, and draftsman. He is best known for a number of award-winning and critically acclaimed plays such as In Beauty It Is Finished, Fountains Beyond, Caroline Chisholm and The Orange Grove. Dann wrote dozens of published and unpublished plays over the course of his lifetime. Originally writing plays for the amateur dramatic society at Sandgate, Queensland, Dann was a particularly shy and reclusive person, and even though he wrote part-time, his more popular plays were widely performed by amateur theatre companies around Australia. George Landen Dann's writing has been appreciated for its social realism, with a number of his plays delving into issues involving Indigenous Australians and their central characters reflecting individuals that Dann had met during his time in outback Australia.
The Quandamooka people are Aboriginal Australians who live around Moreton Bay in Southeastern Queensland. They are composed of three distinct tribes, the Nunukul, the Goenpul and the Ngugi, and they live primarily on Moreton and North Stradbroke Islands, that form the eastern side of the bay. Many were pushed out of their lands when the English colonial government established a penal colony near there in 1824. Each group has its own language. A number of local food sources are utilised by the tribes.
Dunwich Cemetery is a heritage-listed cemetery at Bingle Road, Dunwich, North Stradbroke Island in the City of Redland, Queensland, Australia. It was built from 1847 to 1952. It is also known as One Mile Cemetery. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992.
"Ring Out Wild Bells" is a 1965 Australian television play which aired as part of Wednesday Theatre. It was based on a play by George Landen Dann and the third Brisbane produced ABC drama from ABQ after Vacancy in Vaughan Street and Dark Brown. "Ring Out Wild Bells" aired on 11 November 1964 in Brisbane, 10 February 1965 in Sydney and Canberra, and on July 1, 1965 in Melbourne.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
... upon the recurring themes of isolation, matrimonial and filial duty, and racial prejudice in his major plays such as In Beauty It Is Finished (1931), Fountains Beyond (1942), and No Incense Rising (1937).