| To the West | |
| Director: | Alfred Dampier |
| Setting: | Western Australia |
| Premiere: | 8 February 1896[1] |
| Place: | Her Majesty's Theatre, Sydney |
| Orig Lang: | English |
| Genre: | melodrama |
To the West is a 1896 Australian stage play by Alfred Dampier and Kenneth Mackay, a Member of Parliament.[2] It was Mackay's first play.[3] [4] The script was based on an earlier work of Mackay's, The Yellow Wave.[5]
The play featured horses and sheep on stage.[6] There was an Aboriginal character, Geebung.[7]
The Sydney Morning Herald said "originality was not the strong point of the authors of the new drama."[8] Another review from that paper said "Mr. Dampier's rescue of his friend during the sensational explosion in the mine, and the incident in which the police are baffled through the instrumentality of the black boy, who unfastens their saddle girths are amongst the many situations which find favour with the audience."[9]
The Sunday Times called it "a good workable play."[10]
Table Talk said Dampier "has never had a part better fitted to his powers than Dick Stewart; he literallydominates the first act and as the lonely wanderer dowered with gold beyond the dreams of avarice, yet on the verge of death from thirst in the maddening glare of the arid plains he rose to a height of tragic intensity which the audience found most convincing."[11]
Bird of Freedom argued "being a colonial play, its critics have naturally judged it from the Shakespearean standard, and written accordingly. As a matter of fact, To the West modestly announces itself as a realistic, sensational play, and should be viewed accordingly. Of its kind it is one of the best pieces we have witnessed in Sydney, and is likely when certain scenic defects have been got over to prove the most popular Australian play yet written."[12]
Freeman's Journal called it "perhaps the best effort yet staged by any Australian dramatist."[13]
Leslie Rees wrote "Its scenes were set on the ship Westralia nearing Australia’s shores, at Fremantle where the hero is “fortune’s fool”, at Coolgardie where the great gold search is on, near the Great Salt Lake, and on Black Flag Plain. Shocks included an explosion in the mine, with the hero buried alive, and a final fight on the cliffs and the death of two villains, including a Svengali-like fellow whose power over a charming young girl had been causing concern throughout."[14]