The Author of The Hibernian Father: An Early Colonial Playwright

Abstract

He haunts the books on early Australian theatre and drama. His play is lost. We know its gloomy and involved plot from newspaper reports and we also know that only a few days after its first performance at Sydney's Royal Victoria Theatre on 6 May 1844, it was called in a letter to the Editors of the Sydney Morning Herald 'a vamped-up version of the Rev. Mr Groves' tragic play of The Warden of Galway'. This accusation led to a lively exchange of opinion into which 'The Author of The Hibernian Father' joined and which ended inconclusively; later in the month 'a new Colonial play by the author of The Hibernian Father, called The Currency Lass, was produced with considerable success at the Victoria Theatre'. Brewer, in an aside, gives him a name, 'Mr Geogehan [sic], who held a position in the Sydney Infirmary'.