Arthur H. Adams

Dramatist. Born 6 June 1872 at Lawrence (New Zealand). Graduated from University of Otago (Dunedin) 1894. Journalist on Wellington Evening Post. Covered Boxer rebellion for Sydney Morning Herald 1900. Wrote libretti for Alfred Hill, novels and poetry. Edited Red Page of Sydney Bulletin 1906-09. Edited Lone Hand 1909-11. Impoverished by 1930. Granted Commonwealth Literary Fund assistance 1933. Died 4 March 1936 in Sydney.

Arthur H. Adams was the most vigorous supporter of Australian playwrights early in the 20th century and a successful one himself. About 1897 he wrote the libretto of Tapu, an operetta on a Maori subject, for the Wellington composer Alfred Hill. This gained Adams work for two years in Sydney in 1898-1900 as J.C. Williamson's literary secretary, though he was not pleased when Williamson rewrote and staged the operetta during his absence in England. In the Lone Hand and Theatre magazine he described this and other attempts to have his plays performed, attacked the indifference to local writers of the great actor-managers who controlled Australian theatre, and gave aspiring playwrights good advice on learning their craft: 'Get your play produced. Failing the Managers, get it done by amateurs'.

Adams took his own advice, with success. Pierrot in Australia in Sydney in 1910 and in London in 1912, The Tame Cat, The Wasters, Mrs Pretty and the Premier and other plays received amateur production. A professional management in England took up Mrs Pretty and the Premier. Adams noted in an introduction to his Three Plays for the Australian Stage - The Wasters, Mrs Pretty and Galahad Jones  - in 1914: 'One of the many drawbacks to their production is that there is no Australian stage'. He described the unperformed Galahad Jones, adapted from his own novel, as 'a comedy with a tragic tang', since the leading female character dies at the end. Insisting that it was a play for production in the professional theatre as well as for amateurs, Adams added a postscript: 'Should the theatrical manager demand his pound of flesh, the author has written, much against his will, an alternative "happy ending” in which Sybil recovers' .

Adams's last play, Gallipoli Bill, is his most original. Set during the last days of the First World War, it concerns two ANZAC soldiers. While recovering from wounds, Bill and Jim spend a few weeks in romantic dalliance at an English country mansion. The English lord and lady, their officer son and a silly chappie from the War Office are conventional, but the two soldiers, a lecherous old dowager aunt, the lord's daughter, who works in a munitions factory, and her Australian girlfriend, who is equal to Bill's love-them-and­ leave-them flirtations, are vigorous and cleverly written. Bill has a long, hilarious drunk scene which obviously appealed to the actor-manager Tal Ordell, who cast himself in the role for a season in suburban Sydney in 1926. There are reports of other performances in 1928. In February 1929 Adams sold the stage and film rights to Bert Bailey, who revised the script, but the Great Depression prevented further performance.