Desperate Stages: New Brunswick's Theatre in the 1840's by Edward Mullaly (review)

150 LETTERS IN CANADA 1987 celebration of this corner of Nova Scotia to lamentations about man's depredations of nature elsewhere. As he records his own successful use ofbiological methods to repulse ahinvasion of tent caterpillars, Horwood calls our attention to the New Brunswick government's unsuccessful efforts to use poison sprays to control its budworm infestation, with the result that it is 'locked into a permanent battle, year after year, with nothing to look forward to but poisoned forest and poisoned land henceforth and forever.' In a chapter recounting his discovery of earthworms that had survived a winter without water, he muses on the nature of evolution and man's place in that process: 'We are the first animal with intelligence enough to destroy itselfby the mere misuse of its brains. If we do it (and I·am not one who believes we are going to), let's hope that we don't drag down the whole terrestrial biosphere with us. Without human intervention the plants might continue to evolve even more marvellous expressions of life than those they have already produced.' Ultimately, however, Horwood, though decrying man's 'massive and unnecessary attacks on the environment,' argues that it is not 'necessary for us to wring our hands and cry doom. We are part of the biosphere. We are changing it. For the first time in the history of life on earth it may be changed with caution, with foresight, with intelligence, instead of by the blind forces of chance.' (WINNIFRED M. BOGAARDS) Edward Mullaly. Desperate Stages: New Brunswick's Theatre in the 1840'S Goose Lane Editions. 113· $9.95 Desperate Stages chronicles the professional lives of three individuals whose paths intersected in New Brunswick in 1845: Thomas Hill, the flamboyant and outspoken editor of The Loyalist, Henry W. Preston, the actor-manager who in 1845 produced Hill's only play (the allegedly satirical, riot-inspiring The Provincial Association), and the tragedian Charles Freer, who Preston hoped would redeem his disaster-plagued 1845 season. Despite its subtitle, the book is only secondarily about theatre in New Brunswick. Rather, the events of 1845 act as a springboard from which Mullaly can trace wider patterns. Thus the book's value is chiefly dependent on the extent to which Preston's life of struggle and failure can be seen as a 'microcosm of the actor-manager's world at mid-century' and to which Freer's decline from a reputation as the 'Kean of the East End' is a 'template' of the day-to-day life of a mediocre actor. Through a style that is at once witty and poignant, one is drawn to empathize with personalities of the theatre who, if not heroic in regard to their talent, are at least heroic in regard to their dedication to the theatre, and who stubbornly refuse to give up until defeat after defeat hasbrought them beyond even penury to starvation and isolation, and suicide seems HUMANITIES 151 the only avenue left. As Mullaly points out, their end is in one sense the inevitable result of a star-popularity system that brought wealth and fame to a few while failing to reward those whose support made it possible. A peripheral theatre-figure, Hill is in a different category. Seen through the events of a scandal-touched life and the passionately held views poured forth in his editorials and, apparently, in his satirical play, he is a colourful personality, his grand gestures reminiscent of the swashbuckling styles of many a melodramatic stage-character - hero or villain depending largely on where one stands in the WhiglTory debate. From Preston's and Freer's point of view, the stages were indeed 'desperate,' especially by the end. From the point of view of New Brunswick's theatre history, however, the two canbe seen to have made a contribution that Mullaly ignores. Preston achieved a fair measure of success in Saint John during 1839, 1840, and 1841, despite the usual financial outlay to renovate the theatre, the theatre's location in an unfashionable part of town, and the onset of economic depression. He, like others including the more perspicacious J.W. Lanergan a decade and a half later...