Time is Not Yet Ripe

A sharp-edged political comedy that premiered in 1912 and has lost none of its bite. Thomas Louis Buvelot Esson, writing from the cusp of Australian nationhood, dissects the comfortable delays and convenient excuses that stall progress. The play mocks the politicians, reformers, and society figures who preach change but never quite get around to enacting it, always insisting the moment hasn't arrived, the conditions aren't right, the time isn't yet ripe. What emerges is a portrait of cowardice dressed up as prudence, of revolutionary rhetoric that dissolves the moment action is required. Esson's ear for pomposity and his instinct for the absurd remain remarkably fresh. This is satire that refuses to age, because the human tendency to postpone justice, reform, and change indefinitely is eternal. The play has been revived repeatedly because it still cuts too close to the bone to ignore.