AustLit

Richard Fotheringham notes that although largely regarded by the critics as 'energetic and entertaining' (Companion to Theatre in Australia, 1995, p463), most still found Howarde's play 'plotless, artless and a dilution of earlier genres,' with some even questioning how much relation to life there is in plays which mix melodrama, comedy and farce (see for example: Argus 25 April 1927, p8). Typical of such reviews is the Sydney Morning Herald report on the 1919 world premiere, which suggests that while the show would no doubt have a long run, 'had the script been submitted to the average metropolitan expert actor-manager or press critic it would have been turned down without the least hesitation.' The reviewer's main point of contention was the overwhelming amount of dialogue 'in proportion to the slight dramatic movement... There are [also] about half a dozen proposal scenes to some extent differentiated no doubt, but not to an extent which in the least justifies their recurrence. However, no one in the profession or out of it for that matter will grudge Miss Howarde her success' (8 September 1919, p4).

In reviewing the 1927 Melbourne revival the Age theatre critic writes: 'Whether the bush people represented were portraits or caricatures was immaterial; nor did it matter whether the incidents and machinery resembled something else which has secured a place as Australian farce-drama - based on Steele Rudd's famous story of life on an Australian selection. Miss Kate Howarde is to be congratulated on being able to accommodate the people who want more to laugh than to think, and in the mixing of the stock ingredients for their fare' (25 April 1927, p12). The Bulletin's review of the same production expresses similar sentiments: 'All the familiar stereotypes were duly dusted and brought out, and in having two semi-idiot sons of the homestead making stuttering advances to two moronic village damsels, the authoress was in danger of overstocking her available pasture... Possum Paddock makes no serious pretence of being anything more than an odd bit of stage bush scenery, beginning anywhere and ending in the same locality. In fact, its crisis occurs in the first act and it remaining three are in the nature of a comic epilogue. But loud laughs throng around it like mosquitoes about a swamp, and they thicken most when Walter Cornock happens to be upon the stage' (28 April 1927, p52).

E. D. K., the Green Room's theatre critic similarly writes in 1923 : 'One doesn't suppose that Miss Howarde herself regards the play as a literary gem ; doubtless, if it were so, it might have died stillborn, for your average Australian has no time for what he cannot understand, and the rank and file of him gets its literary inspiration chiefly from the scintillating columns of the sporting pages. Hence, Miss Howarde was wise enough in her generation to write a play that could be understood of the common people and apparently has achieved a theatrical and a financial success. Bulletin and other similar writers seem to have established a kind of literary canon that the man from the country districts always interlards his speech with such expressions as "Cripes!," "Spare me days!," "My oath!," "Dinkum," and "Be blowed," that he misplaces the letter "h,' omits the final "g," and indulges in such outré pronunciations as "dorg" for dog and "laig" for leg. Such conditions may have obtained forty or fifty years ago, but latterly the schoolmaster has been more constantly abroad and Bill-Jim's lingual eccentricities have become much modified. Possum Paddock has specimens of most of the good old standardised stock characters of melodrama: the good old father and mother, the sweet innocent daughter, the villain - a mild one in this case - who would marry her for her money; the English Johnny who is not altogether the fool that he looks; the manly hero who is attracted by the sweet daughter, but eventually marries the city lady of a more mature age, sound judgment and strict morals; the grasping neighbour, an envious David who coverts the Australian Naboth's creek paddock; his gawky girls who confer the glad eye upon the good father's bucolic sons, despite the fierce opposition of their father, the aforesaid envious David, a sententious rouseabout who enigmatically informs the city lady that he belongs to a shy family... These characters - some of them more theatrical than natural - were nevertheless well individualised' (March 1923, p5).

Advertising in the Brisbane Courier (21 February 1920, p2) includes a brief poem;

Two men went for a fishing trip / They hoped to catch some Haddock / The only thing they caught was colds / Then cursed their luck till they grew old / For missing Possum Paddock.

while advertisements placed in the Argus in 1927 claim : 'Possum Paddock is the Spot where the Real "Digger" Humour was Born" (see 7 May 1927, p38).