Theatre
The Touch of Silk
Betty Roland · 1928
Synopsis
Jeanne, a young Frenchwoman, married a former Australian soldier after the Great War and followed him to a small town in the Mallee that is stricken by drought. Her husband came back shell-shocked, and the couple face hardship and the prejudice of an isolated farming community, which looks askance at the foreigner. Jeanne is homesick, and the relationship between the two spouses grows troubled as the land tests them, according to the La Boite archives.
Context
Written in the mid-twenties, the play was first staged on 3 November 1928 at the Playhouse in Melbourne by the Melbourne Repertory Theatre Society, directed by Frank D. Clewlow; it was then signed Betty M. Davies, the name of the author's first husband. Sydney saw it in October 1929, Brisbane the following month. It was hailed as the first Australian play by a true dramatist; Katharine Cornell thought of bringing it to Broadway. Revised in 1955, often broadcast on radio, it had its first professional production only in 1976, at the Independent Theatre in Sydney.
Who it is for
A play in English of about a hundred pages in the 1974 edition; no French translation.
Prizes and reception
Critics in 1928 saw in it a vein of gold and the outline of a great drama, according to Currency Press.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.