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A review by tasmanian_bibliophile
The Playmaker by Thomas Keneally
5.0
‘Stealing time seems a heavy crime with the judges.’
In 1788, the First Fleet landed in Botany Bay to establish a penal colony. In 1789, Lieutenant Ralph Clark is commissioned by H.E. (unnamed in the novel but historically Governor Arthur Phillip) to stage a play in honour of the King’s birthday. George Farquhar’s comedy ‘The Recruiting Officer’ (first performed in 1706) is the play: the fact that the colony possessed only two copies of the script was the least of the handicaps to be overcome. Lieutenant Clark selects his cast from the convicts: burglars, whores and highwaymen. Most of the convicts are illiterate, rehearsals will be challenging and costuming rudimentary.
There are many levels to this novel. Staging the play – bringing British culture to the Antipodes – provides a backdrop for this period of the tentative new colony. Ralph Clark himself is torn between the family he has left behind and his feelings for a female convict who is one of the actors in the play. Woven around historical fact, this novel brings people and place to life. The play, that civilizing event, is being staged in a struggling community formed by exile.
I enjoyed this novel and Mr Keneally’s depiction of this period of Australia’s colonial history. Thomas Keneally wrote in the epilogue: ‘For yes, though they are fantastical creatures, they all lived.’ Imagine that.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
In 1788, the First Fleet landed in Botany Bay to establish a penal colony. In 1789, Lieutenant Ralph Clark is commissioned by H.E. (unnamed in the novel but historically Governor Arthur Phillip) to stage a play in honour of the King’s birthday. George Farquhar’s comedy ‘The Recruiting Officer’ (first performed in 1706) is the play: the fact that the colony possessed only two copies of the script was the least of the handicaps to be overcome. Lieutenant Clark selects his cast from the convicts: burglars, whores and highwaymen. Most of the convicts are illiterate, rehearsals will be challenging and costuming rudimentary.
There are many levels to this novel. Staging the play – bringing British culture to the Antipodes – provides a backdrop for this period of the tentative new colony. Ralph Clark himself is torn between the family he has left behind and his feelings for a female convict who is one of the actors in the play. Woven around historical fact, this novel brings people and place to life. The play, that civilizing event, is being staged in a struggling community formed by exile.
I enjoyed this novel and Mr Keneally’s depiction of this period of Australia’s colonial history. Thomas Keneally wrote in the epilogue: ‘For yes, though they are fantastical creatures, they all lived.’ Imagine that.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith