Men Without Wives

Men Without Wives is a 1938 Australian stage play by Henrietta Drake-Brockman. It was her best known play.[1][2]

Men Without Wives
Written byHenrietta Drake-Brockman
Date premieredApril 30, 1938 (1938-04-30)
Place premieredSydney Players Club, St James Hall, Sydney
Original languageEnglish
Subjectmale-female relationships
Genredrama
SettingA remote north Queensland cattle station

It won first prize in a 1938 playwriting competition held to celebrate the New South Wales Sesquicentenary.[3]

The Sydney Morning Herald said the play has "a passionate sincerity and an earnest conviction which outweigh the inconsistencies and flimsiness of its development und the artificiality of its construction... a not insignificant monument to the dauntless and magnificent courage of the woman outback."[4]

Leslie Rees said "it had atmospheric cogency and hard unflinching truths, but the best of it was the character of Ma Bates, a horsey, betrousered, tough-living, genuine nor’-wester, a splendid study, who should have dominated the play from the beginning, instead of merely from the second act. Better construction would have made of Men Without Wives an important and memorable drama."[5]

The play was published in a collection of her plays which also included Dampier's Ghost.

Adaptations

The play was adapted for radio in 1948.[6]

References
  1. "Woman's Play Tells of Men Without Wives". The Australian Women's Weekly. Vol. 5, no. 40. Australia, Australia. 12 March 1938. p. 12. Retrieved 7 September 2023 – via National Library of Australia.
  2. Peter Cowan, 'Drake-Brockman, Geoffrey (1885–1977)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/drake-brockman-geoffrey-10047/text17719, published first in hardcopy 1996, accessed online 7 September 2023.
  3. "Henrietta Drake-Brockman". The Sun. No. 1826. New South Wales, Australia. 27 March 1938. p. 3 (Supplement to the Sunday Sun and Guardian Magazine). Retrieved 7 September 2023 – via National Library of Australia.
  4. "Winning Play". The Sydney Morning Herald. No. 31, 304. New South Wales, Australia. 2 May 1938. p. 9. Retrieved 7 September 2023 – via National Library of Australia.
  5. Rees, Leslie (1953). Towards An Australian Drama. p. 120.
  6. Australian Broadcasting Commission. (1939), "New South Wales Commercial Programmes", ABC weekly, Sydney: ABC (Vol. 10 No. 41 (9 October 1948)), nla.obj-1432122018, retrieved 7 September 2023 – via Trove
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