Inaugural entertainment, St. George’s Hall, Perth, Western Australia, under the patronage of His Excellency Major-General Sir Harry St. George Ord … on Thursday and Monday, December 4 and 8, 1879,

an Amateur Company will perform the well-known 3-act musical melodrama the Colleen Bawn, or the Brides of Garryowen … … Perth, W.A. : Stirling Bros., Printers, 1879. Quarto bifolium, [4] pp., printed entirely in gold ink; short closed tear at upper margin of second leaf, last side lightly marked, otherwise extremely well preserved; accompanied by two related clippings from Perth newspapers of the period containing reviews of other productions of the Thespian Dramatic Company.

Very rare programme for the very first performances at St. George’s Hall, the city of Perth’s first purpose-built theatre, on 4 and 8 December 1879.

Dion Boucicault’s popular play, The Colleen Bawn, was performed on both nights by members of the newly formed amateur troupe, the Thespian Dramatic Company, whose members are billed as Mr H. C. Prinsep (scenery designer and narrator); Mr Mayhew; Mr. Turner; Mr. F. M. Stone; Mr. T. Hills; Mr. A. J. Hillman; Mr. W. Gegg; Mr. C. Woodhouse; Mrs Broadhurst; Mrs Price; Mrs Wilkinson; and Mrs Machree.

A lengthy review of the first evening (Thursday, 4 December) appeared in the The Inquirer and Commercial News (Perth), 10 December 1879, in which the writer noted that ‘the spacious room [was] crowded by one of the most fashionable audiences I have seen in the colony. It was proper, of course, that there should be a Prologue, and Mr. H. C. Prinsep gave one – brief and to the point….’

A highly significant piece of Western Australian theatre ephemera, dating from a period before there was any homegrown professional theatre in Western Australia. (The first purpose-built professional theatre in Perth, the Theatre Royal, did not open until 1897).

Provenance: UK trade, ex UK private collection. Originally contained in a nineteenth-century commonplace album which was almost certainly compiled by a British immigrant to Western Australia in the 1870s-80s, possibly Mrs. Elizabeth Wilkinson (Clarke) (1844-1929), wife of Captain George Faulkner Wilkinson (1837-1884).