"Life in the bush is hot, hard and not for the faint-hearted. Under the extreme sun of Northern frontier country a pack of itinerant drovers thrive in the land they call home. A freak stampede brings ‘Briglow’ Bill and his mates face to face with mortality and their masculinity and mateship are tested. All the while, Pidgeon, a young Aboriginal boy, watches the white fellows. He sees something the drovers cannot speak of and, for Briglow, this silence is as stifling yet as familiar and as comforting as the heat that surrounds them all.
The Drovers is a bush drama that is rich with tension, grim stoicism and heightened masculinity of the, notably, all-male characters. Clipped sentences and straight-talking speak of the no-nonsense attitude necessary to survive in the remote bush of the 1920s. The play draws us to the campfire where, in light and heat, we see the relationships the drovers experience: between each other, between white man and Aboriginal man, between man and land and, finally, the ultimate and unavoidable relationship: a man’s connection with life and death."
'The scene is laid in the tea-room of any large office at tea time. The characters are the office girls, and the dialogue, a discussion of the girls' bosses and the latest gossip.'
Source: '"Office Interlude" A Hit', Daily News, 6 Apr. 1940, p. 6.
The quest for home and security is a recurrent theme and in Delphiniums we have the story of Queenie and Ed Burton, two pensioners slowly ground deeper into poverty and powerlessness by their lack of secure housing. From the beginning of the play we see Queenie and Ed as humble people who want nothing more than to live in peace and be good neighbours. They are simple, elderly people with few demands other than Queenie's absolute need to make a garden. She is a naturally nervous woman who relies upon the kindness of others to make her feel good about herself. Her nervousness is highlighted and increased by the monosyllabic Mrs Corby, their new landlady - a scowling, bitter woman who seems to dislike seeing other people happy....The gradual transformation of Queenie, from a naturally kind and open woman to someone who is capable of relishing any misfortune that befalls Mrs Corby, and the subtle shift of dependency between Queenie and Ed that occurs because of this, highlights the delicacy with which Shepherd draws her characters. (Kerry Kilner, 'Introduction', Playing the Past: Three Plays by Australian Women (1995): vii-viii).
Always forced to move, the Burtons try to make 'home' wherever they are. Mrs Corby finally forces them to move again. In her disappointment, Queenie smashes the delphiniums she has grown-"She was cruel to me-but I shouldn't have done it-they was so beautiful-When I came here I was a good woman-I should have left her to Gawd." (The Campbell Howard Annotated Index of Australian Plays 1920-1955 (1993) edited by Jack Bedson and Julian Croft (1993):339)
Characters
QUEENIE BURTON
ED BURTON
MRS CORBY
GLADDIE (MRS HARPER)
MR WEBSTER
