AustLit

Set in the 'back country of New South Wales... the plot hangs on the doings of a small group of people at Happy Valley. Jack Melton and Jim Fernleigh have taken up a selection near to the farm of their old friend Joe Moreland, and their close and wonderful mateship is a matter of local pride.' Jack and Jim's good fortune begins to change, however, after the return to the Moreland homestead of Joe's beautiful and accomplished nineteen year old daughter, Nellie, who the two young men last saw when they were children in Sydney. Nellie is not in father's home two hours when Jim declares his passion for her. Although his proposal is accepted later that evening, the villainess squatter, Ralph Seymour, also attempts to woo the young woman with stories of wealth and luxury (even though he already has a wife). Nellie's response is to take to him with a stockwhip. When Seymour insults Nellie, Jack steps in and attempts to put the villain in his place, Seymour pulls out a knife with murderous intent. Jim saves his mate, however, by shooting Seymour dead. Although seemingly a case of justifiable homicide, Jim is nevertheless 'cheerfully' arrested by Sergeant Haynes, who also has it in for him, and he is put into the local goal awaiting trial. His stay in prison is brief, however, as he escapes with the help of his mate Jack. The rest of the story sees Jim attempting to avoid re-capture and finally make a dash to Melbourne to place money, at 20-1 odds, on a race at Ascot (Argus 6 February 1911, p9 ; Age 6 February 1911, p11).

The comedy aspects are said to have been numerous, with Bert Bailey (as Dolf Darling) providing much of the humour. 'There is a freshness and spontaneity about Mr Bailey's comedy,' records the Argus, 'that never fails to take his audience by storm with his opening sentences. The comic element in the drama rarely flags, and Mr Duggan has dipped his pen freely in laughter. Absurd love passages between Dolf and Jessie Moreland, practical jokes played on the police, Dolf's breezy slanging of his employer, the ludicrous eagerness of the blacktracker, Gunyah, lighten the production from curtain to curtain' (Argus 6 February 1911, p9)

The Argus also reports that Duggan had succeeded in concealing the outcome of his plot until a late stage, thereby maintaining a keen interest. As melodrama's go, writes the paper's theatre critic, My Mate has not more than its share of improbabilities, and it contains much that is convincing, and a great deal that is frankly hilarious. The staging is very good, the most effective scene being the granite gorge, where Joe swings at the end of a stockwhip across a chasm 2,000 ft deep to safety, and the blacktracker seeking to follow him is dashed to death. All the accessories of Australian bush life are well depicted in the settings' (Argus 6 February 1911, p9). The Age critic was similarly impressed with Duggan's stage craft, writing: ''Mr Duggan has considerable ingenuity in inventing telling situations. His dialogue is on the whole brighter than that of the foreign made play. His comic relief, moreover, is usually worthy of the name; in fact it is often - as in the al fresco open air scene between Mr Bailey and Mr Wilson in the second act - distinctly good' The critic's only negative response was that Duggan had covered the same old ground: 'We have again the selector, the squatter, the boundary rider and the policeman, not to mention the drunken trooper and the black tracker... [and] on the feminine side we have again the squatter's daughter, under a new name it is true, but without any specially new characteristics... We have met them all before, not once but half a dozen times, and it is a mistake to suppose, as Mr Duggan seems to do, that they are the only types that possess dramatic interest in the continent' (6 February 1911, p11).

Synopsis of scenery : Act 1; Sc 1. Exterior of Joe Moreland's Homestead, Happy Valley ; The Power of Love ; Act 2; Sc 1. The Mate's Selection ; The Guardian Angel ; A Mate's Self-sacrifice ; The Arrest ; Sc 2. Interior of the Police Station, Happy Valley ; Sc 3. The Prison Yard ; Jack's Clever Disguise ; Jim's Escape ; Act 3; Sc 1. Exterior of Police Station, Happy Valley ; Sc 2. The Barn and Hayloft at Moreland's ; The Tightening of the Noose ; Sc 3. The Bush ; Jim's Attempt to Foil the Blacktracker ; Sc 4. The Giant's Elbow, Granite Gorge ; The Novel Stockwhip Sensation ; Jim's Swing to Freedom ; Gunyah's Swing to Death ; Act 4; Sc1. Interior of Joe Moreland's House ; The Ascot £1,000 ; 'Loving Hearts United in Joy and Happiness.'

When Panimbla Station in the Australian outback becomes the target of a gang of cattle duffers the owner, Stephen Maitland, is unaware that his manager, Sydney Winton, is in league with the gang. Unable to get men to work for him after two of his stockmen are killed in a raid, Maitland's situation looks grim. Things begin to turn around however through the plucky resolve of his daughter Mona (aided by the often hilariously funny Joe Lachlan), who suspects Winton of being involved in the cattle stealing. With the arrival of Dave Goulburn, a stranger who comes 'per boot off the pad' and in search of a job, Mona finally finds an ally ready to take on Winton and his cronies. The situation becomes charged with danger when the cattle duffers' leader, Ironbark Jim, recognises Goulburn as the man who smashed up a gang he had previously ridden with. He then puts into action a plan to kill the station's new boundary rider. This leads to a fight between the two men (at the Sloping Rock) and naturally results in the hero's victory and blossoming romance with the heroine. Reporting on the melodrama's final acts the Age theatre critic writes : 'Deeds of recklessness, deeds of courage and deeds of sentiment follow on rapidly and keep the attention of the audience riveted on scenes enacted amidst surroundings of the most realistic description' (3 May 1909, p11).

The Argus was similarly impressed by The Man from Outback. 'Knowing the patrons of the King's Theatre by, and their love of theatrical excitement,' writes the paper's theatre critic, ' the authors have "forced the note" to its topmost pitch, and given them an orgy of love, revenge, heroism, cowardice, hate and degradation. Comic turns and interesting work of cleverly trained horses and dogs adds a piquant flavouring that roused to enthusiasm the great heart of the King's audience.' Regarding the characters of the play the same critic suggests that although they 'have crept out of the many bush ballads and prose sketches which often have given competent expression to Australian character, humanity and drama, [their] transference to the stage presents obstacles as yet too formidable for their successful materialising, and the personages are little more than picturesque mouthpieces for the authors' ideas' (3 May 1909, p9).

The synopsis of scenery reads : Act 1. Sc 1. - The Muster Camp at Panimbla Station ; Sc 2. Outside the Store at Panimbla ; Sc 3. The Homestead. Act 2 Sc 1. The Boundary Hut ; Sc 2. The Track to the Haunted Bend ; Sc 3. The Haunted Bend. Act 3 Sc 1. Outside the Boundary Hut (Dave rescued from the burning hut by his horse and dog) ; Sc 2. A Room at Panimbla ; Sc 3. The Homestead Track ; Sc 4. The Sloping Rock (Saved by the Stockwhip). Act 4 Sc 1. Never Never's Humpty ; Sc 2. A Room at the Homestead ; Sc 3. The Homestead Track ; Sc 4. The Homestead.

The Argus review indicates that almost every scene bore the hallmark of the bush. 'An immense amount of local detail runs through the four acts,' writes the critic, 'including an aboriginal's burial place up a big gum tree, native fire-making and pretty well every bit of bush slang that could be pressed into service' (3 May 1909, p9).

An adaptation of Marcus Clarke's novel, written by Edmund Duggan, who also took the role of Rufus Dawes.

A contemporary review notes that:

The drama is necessarily constructed with an eye to startling effects and powerful situations, and ample scope is found for these in the brutalities and barbarisms which characterised the convict system with which the early pages of Australian history are besmirched. Thus the mutiny on board the convict ship Malabar is given due prominence; the scenes in the prison yard where 'man's inhumanity to man' was so frequently witnessed are appropriately emphasised, and the various details of attempted escapes and inevitable captures are realistically presented. These are legitimate uses of the story for dramatic purposes, but the scene between the cannibal Gabbett and his two comrades is unnecessarily repulsive, and touches that border-line where attempted realism only provokes laughter, the subsequent view of the man-eating convict chasing a comic parson with an axe being neither convincing nor edifying. The final act gets away from tho book altogether, but this is probably only to be expected, for the patrons of melodrama would scarcely rest content without the good old-fashioned tableau of virtue triumphant and villany [sic] vanquished, and so on this interesting picture the curtain falls.

Source:

'Theatre Royal', Chronicle, 11 December 1897, p.34.