Pioneer Players: The Lives of Louis and Hilda Esson

by Peter Fitzpatrick

This is a dual biography, the story of Louis Esson, the distinguished playwright who has been called 'the father of Australian drama', and his wife Hilda, who did her own pioneering in the theatre and in public health. The plays they wrote and performed reflected the drama of their lives: creative angst, intellectual conflict, untimely death, romantic entanglement, jealousy and despair. Yet Peter Fitzpatrick's book is more than a good read. As a critical appraisal of Louis Esson's plays and an exploration of the relationships the Essons had with well-known literary and theatrical figures in Australia and overseas, the book is an exploration of a developing Australian culture and identity. It is also about the dynamics of a marriage between two brilliant people, reflecting not only the patterns of gender relationships in their own time, but universal passions and strategies.

424 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

(b 1944) Mayo Street is Peter Fitzpatrick’s third novel. Its predecessors, Death in the BackPocket (with Barbara Wenzel) and Promontory, set respectively in an AFL football club and on a bushwalk in the 1920s, are similarly crime-novels-with-a-twist; all three share a keen eye for the complexities – and the humour – of human behaviour.

Peter’s writing spans a number of genres: in feature film, his credits include screenplays for Hotel Sorrento (for which he won an AFI Award) and Brilliant Lies; as a biographer, he has published two dual biographies, Pioneer Players: the lives of Louis and Hilda Esson, and The Two Frank Thrings (for which he won the National Biography Award in 2013); and in musical theatre, three of his shows have been professionally staged – flowerchildren: the Mamas and Papas Story, Life’s a Circus and CrossXroads (with composer Anthony Costanzo). Another musical, Castro’s Children (for which Peter has written book and lyrics in collaboration with composer Simon Stone) will have its premiere in 2024.

Peter Fitzpatrick is Honorary Professor of Performing Arts at Monash University, where he held a Personal Chair until 2007. In a previous life, Peter taught English and Drama at Monash University, where he was Foundation Head and Professor of Performing Arts. He directed some thirty productions during that period, at Monash and beyond, and published three books and many articles in the field of twentieth-century Australian theatre.

Peter lives in Melbourne (and sometimes in Port Douglas) with his wife, Gabrielle Baldwin.

Reviews

[Neil · Rating 2 out of 5]

A painfully written book. It’s as if the author is watching, and is enjoying and conscious of the pain he is inflicting on you.
The story is interesting in itself. It’s just the style of writing consists of long, tiresome sentences that finally after what seems like eons to eventually get to an inkling of what he’s talking about. He also commits the big sin from my perspective of writing a sentence that does mean anything in itself. These are often lead up sentences to what he actually means to say in the next sentence. One of my bété noires, not to be done.
As an academic I hope this author is a better lecturer than writer, or more people will be suffering with me.
If you want to read this quite interesting story I suggest you speed read it, rather than follow my habit of trying to make sense of a difficult prose style.