A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF EDWIN JAMES BRADY - Mallacoota ...

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Brady’s entry into journalism was by way of political journals, but after this initial
experience he joined the staff of the Sydney Truth in 1893 and was assigned the job of
dramatic critic, a task neither onerous or highbrow, considering the readership
towards which the paper was aimed. This involved attendance at the Criterion, Tivoli,
Lyceum and Her Majesty’s theatres as well as Theatre Royal, the School of Arts, the
Coogee Palace Aquarium, with occasional visits to other places, such as the
Centenary Hall. At these centres of entertainment a varied collection of plays,
tableaux, variety acts, comic operas and operettas was performed and general
descriptions and reviews were duly reported in Truth in several columns – at first
headed “Amusements” and then “Give Us Show”. Under Brady’s enthusiastic
reporting it expanded into a section of three or four columns providing amusement, if
not serious criticism, to the readers.
Brady was a sufficiently able newspaperman even then to turn a neat phrase in his
account of the various performances. So Nellie Stewart in “The Mikado” was “a
bright ray of comic opera sunshine and has raised the theatrical thermometer to
financial heat” – a very necessary talent. 1 And when two male vocalists sang a sacred
duet at the Tivoli in a Sunday evening performance, Brady began his review with:
“Ho! Everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come
ye, ,buy and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price” and
then proceeded to rather pedestrian wordplay on the “Ho!” 2 And yet again, on
another occasion when a Sunday evening performance at the Tivoli was viewed, the
notice began:
Now in the days when Dibbs ruled with a rod of cast-iron over the land of New
South Wales there arose a mighty singer named Rickards who filled the air
with sweet sounds and choice phrase on every day of the week including the
Lord’s Day which is the Sabbath. He did these things at a house called the
Tivoli which is situate in t he street called Castlereagh nigh over unto the
thoroughfare known as King. Wherefore Dibbs the ruler being approached by
the Scribes and Pharisees, who liked not that any should work on the Sabbath
but themselves, rose up and ordered the man Rickards to clothe himself in
sackcloth and ashes and sing not to the people on the Sabbath. And Rickards
being a man who walked in the fear of the Lord and Dibbs did even as he was
commanded, and sang no more on the Sabbath, neither did he sing on other
days of the week. Wherefore the people cried unto him in a loud voice… 3
There are times when Brady’s notices are serious in intent and tone. Some
performances came in for several notices. For example, when Shakespeare’s “Henry
V” was being played at Her Majesty’s Theatre, a review was written of the first
appearance of the play and then a more general, follow-up notice was given the next
week. While the first review praised the acting of George Rignold and his
dramatically effective speeches, his exquisite pathos, his “rare, delicate touch” and his
scholarly approach, the second gave more attention to the stage-graft and to the actual
intentions of Shakespeare in the play. Brady makes the point that Shakespeare has
depicted Henry V with such enthusiasm that it is no wonder that some regard him as
his view of the ideal man. With this thesis however, Brady disagrees, considering that
the mind which gave the world the “brooding, meditative” Hamlet and the
“passionate, romantic” Romeo “could hardly look upon the practical, fact-loving
monarch as emblematic of all that was admirable in life.”
1 Truth, 10.10.1894.
2 Truth, 4.2.1894.
3 Truth, 27.5.1894.