Theatre
The Golden Age
Louis Nowra · 1985
Synopsis
In 1939, two young men set out to explore the wild forests of Tasmania: Francis Morris, an engineer of modest origins, and Peter Archer, son of a prominent Hobart family. Lost, they discover a small community that has been cut off from the world for generations, descended from white settlers, which has forged a language and customs of its own; among its members is Betsheb. The two men bring the group back to Hobart, where Peter's father, Dr William Archer, takes charge of reintegrating it, as war approaches.
Context
The play was first staged in February 1985 by the Playbox Theatre Company at the Studio of the Victorian Arts Centre in Melbourne, directed by Rex Cramphorn, and published the same year. Its author took its starting point from an academic who had told him about a strange group in the south-west of the island. It opens with the rehearsal of a tragedy by Euripides, and the community performs its own version of Shakespeare in it. The Nimrod company revived it in Sydney in 1987, a Wellington company in 1988, and the Sydney Theatre Company in 2016.
Who it is for
A play in English in which the lost community speaks its own language; the BnF lists no French translation of it.
Prizes and reception
Read as an allegory of the fate of the Aboriginal people of Tasmania, and cited as a modern example of Tasmanian Gothic.
Sources for this page 3
The pages consulted to check this page.