Figures in a Colonial Landscape: Green Melodrama at the Adelphi Theatre

In January 1845 John Baldwin Buckstone’s drama The Green Bushes: or A Hundred Years Ago opened to great acclaim at London’s Adelphi Theatre and, in the character of Miami ‘The Huntress of the Mississippi’, created a part that actress-manager Céline Céleste would reprise for the next thirty years in London, the British provinces, the US and Australia. The staging of the original production drew upon contemporary interest in depictions of exotic ‘others’ and coincided with the exhibition of ‘real’ Native Americans in London. The temporal and geographical setting of the play – featuring scenes in both Ireland and colonial America during the 1740s – thus has both political and environmental significance.
In this paper I present an ecofeminist reading of the popular melodrama, drawing on the theories of scholars such as Annette Kolodny and Stacy Alaimo. Analysing the characters of Miami and Tigertail (played by Mrs Worrall) in relation to the scenography and plot function of the natural environment enables a reassessment of the nature/culture dichotomy that structures the play.