Jeannie Once | WednesdayBusk

Part of the trilogy Wednesday to Come.

The first part of the trilogy “Wednesday to Come” and “Pass it On.” Jeannie is in Victorian Dunedin and her hopes are raised when Mrs Wishart arrives with her Maori servant Martha to commission a gown. But her Calvinistic husband, the Reverend Wishart, doesn’t approve and his punishment involves having Martha being interned in the local mental asylum.

Jeannie, whose great-granddaughter and namesake is to become one of the fighters and stayers in ’51, is shown as a wonderfully solid woman, full of humor, compassion, and the Irish gift of the gab… The plot is as suspenseful as a good melodrama …

An ‘artistically Colossal Star Dramatic Combination’ as they used to claim in the advertisements of 1879. On Renée’s achievement as a people’s playwright it undoubtedly sets the seal. — Helen Watson White, Dominion Sunday Times

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