Pacific Paradise by Dymphna Cusack (1955)

 Stage and radio play by Cusack.

Austlit here

Finalist in PAB competitoin. eric Portman considered it for TV. See here.

First produced at the Waterside Workers Theatre, Sydney, 26 November 1955 (reviewed here) and on ABC radio, January 1956.(Along with two other new Austrlian plays The Hermit Crab and The Bombora) Letters of praise to that here and here

ABC play was to be on Dec 1955 but postponed due to NSW election see here. 

 

Play was popular in China and Cusack was invited to tour there see here. Went for six months in 1957 see here.

In addition, by 1962 the play had been produced in New Zealand, the UK, Japan. Latin America, the USSR, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Germany, China, Albania, North Korea, Rumania, Bulgaria, Cuba, Iceland. 

 

Premise

 

The play tells of the island of Moluka in the South Pacific, where the enlightened inhabitants live an almost Utopian existence under the rule of a white man, Simon Hoad, to whose family the island was given by Queen Victoria a century ago.  Hoad is married to a native woman and has a daughter Laloma.

Their existence is threatened when they are informed that a new super-bomb is to be exploded on a neighbouring island and that they must be evacuated. 

 

Scientists and officers visit Moluka to put their case and bring pressure. Hoad refuses to leave and seeks to enlist the sympathies of people all over the world in his fight to be allowed to survive in his island paradise. 

ABC CAST  see here and here
Simon Hoad - John Tate
Clive Everett - John Meillon
Laloma - Wynn Nelson
Professor Nicholas - Edward Howell
Colonel Winterton - Joe McCormick
Niti - Margaret Christensen
Hon. Osbert Day - Moray Powell
Citole - Lola Brooks
Talua - Betty Lucas
K-ahru - John Bluthal
Batah - Keith Buckley
American Announcer - Richard Meikle
Narrator, Australian Announcer - Ric Huttor Producer: Eric John   

Review is here.

Play accused of being Commie propaganda by a moron on the ABC Weekly see here.

Propaganda Plays? DURING 1956 the A.B C. has broad- cast several plays, including Pacific Paradise and The Day After Tomorrow, which contain subtle Communist propa- ganda. The proof of this statement is to be found in Tribune, a Communist publication which recommends its read- ers to listen to these plays. What is of even greater significance, Pacific Paradise has been given a re- peat performance by the A.B.C. and 1 understand The Day After Tomorrow is to be repeated during August, owing to popular demand. This ‘‘popular demand” is created by Communist leaders instructing members and fellow-travellers to deluge the A.B.C with letters and ’phone calls expressing admiration concerning the plays referred to, and the A.B.C. has apparently fallen for this old manoeuvre. 

P. C. KENT. Cremorne, N.S.W. 

The A.B.C. Director of Drama and Features, Mr. Neil Hutchison, replies:— 

The description of these two plays as Communist propaganda is baffling. Paci- fic Paradise concerns the protest of an island community at being removed from their homeland, with the alternative of being wiped out by a bomb exploded 100 miles away—a wholly imaginative story of an imaginary island. Many serious-minded and responsible people fear that the atom bomb may not only result in horrifying genetical changes in those whom it indirectly affects, but also that it may eventually obliterate what we know as Western Civilisation. These people belong to all parties and cannot be described as Communists. Pacific Paradise is a good play, the characters are real and the development has integrity. The play was recently entered for a competition run by the Playwrights’ Advisory Board, was read by many qualified judges (some of whom are known to hold very strongly anti- Communist views), and reached the finals. No comment on these grounds was made by any of the readers. The Day After Tomorrow also con- cerned the hydrogen bomb, and tried to envisage the terrible result of its use, and how humanity, well nigh obliterated by its dreadful impact, might climb back slowly and painfully to dignity and self respect. I find it very hard to see the influence of Communist propaganda at work in these two Australian plays. It is perhaps germane to the issue to remark that holders of extreme political opinions habitually see their opponents as ex- tremists. I am not suggesting that Mr. Kent belongs to this category bur simply that he has cried wolf after having sighted a puppy dog.