[PLAYBILL] [April 7, 1883]. Amateur Theatricals, St. George’s Hall, Perth. Uncle’s Will … A Husband to Order. 

Perth, WA : [s.n.], 1883. Broadsheet, 210 x 130 mm, lithograph-printed in navy on light blue linen paper, on the first side of a bifolium (the other three sides blank); some silverfishing along the fold and at bottom edges, otherwise good condition.

Perth playbill listing the casts of two plays. Performers include Mrs. Wilkinson, Mr. Harper, Mr. Wright, Mrs. Price, Mrs. L. Clifton, Mrs. Broadhurst, Mr. Leake, Mr. James Prinsep, Mr. Drake, Mr. Prinsep. Note: a review appeared in The West Australian, 10 April 1883.

A rare ephemeral printing dating from a time 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).