No Sugar

No Sugar is a four-act play written by Jack Davis. It is the story of an Aboriginal family’s struggles for dignity, equality, and justice during the Australian depression of the 1930s. It has much in common with other literary touchstones of activism, such as John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, and more. Like Steinbeck’s novel, No Sugar centers on a particular family and their antagonists, both circumstantial and personal. The members of each group represent different realities of life amidst the struggle between the Australia’s Aboriginal people and the white authorities who subjugate them. 

Act I introduces the members of the Millimurra and Munday families, who are currently encamped at the Government Well reserve. Jimmy Munday serves as the center of the family for the first two acts of the play. Living with him in the camp is his mother Gran and the Millimmurra family: Joe, Cissie, David, and Sam. Their lives are difficult but not unbearable. However, shortly after Act One begins, their rations are cut. They will no longer have such essentials as meat and soap. These changes are instituted, ironically, by the Protector of Aboriginal Affairs, Mr. Neville. The government soon claims that there is an outbreak of scabies among the native population. Therefore, they must be moved to another settlement. However, it appears that there is another motive: if the natives are kicked out of Government Well, they will not be in close proximity to the local white people. Having no real alternative, the two families leave for the next settlement, Moore River.

Act II begins at the new settlement, where the situation begins to deteriorate. The white characters hold lengthy, imperious, and insulting conversations about their duty to “civilize” the natives, whom they speak of as if they are savages. Act Two also introduces the suspicion that the white authorities continually sexually abuse the girls in the settlements without consequences. 

A woman called the Matron comes to conduct medical examinations and pronounces them all clean and healthy. She is married to Mr. Neal, the settlement superintendent who commits many of the play’s blatant indecencies. He represents the attitudes of the white occupiers of the time. Working for Mr. Neal is a black tracker named Billy, who is one of the most contradictory characters in the play. Her verdict proves that there was another reason for moving the natives to the new settlement. 

Act II introduces what becomes the pivotal relationship of the story: the romantic relationship between Joe and Mary. They quickly fall in love and just as quickly run into trouble. Mary is afraid of Mr. Neal, who wants her to work in the hospital. It is a poorly kept secret that he transfers girls to the hospital when he desires them sexually. Rather than subject herself to the possibility of rape, she and Joe decide to run away together at the end of Act Two. 

Act III focuses on the efforts of Joe and Mary as they return to their former settlement. They find that the Government Well reserve has been destroyed. There was never any intention of allowing the natives to return there after their “temporary” move, which was predicated upon the fictional scabies outbreak. Billy, acting on Mr. Neal’s orders, comes to arrest them. Joe manages to handcuff Billy and they escape, but they have nowhere to go. They are arrested shortly after for leaving their settlement without permission. Act Three concludes with Mr. Neville giving a pompous speech to members of the Australian Historical Society. Despite his own poor example, he lectures about the need for whites to the treat indigenous people as their equals, provided that they can be “civilized.” 

Act IV begins with Joe in prison. A pregnant Mary has returned to the Moore River settlement. Mr. Neal continues to insist that she work in the hospital. When she defies him, he stands by as Billy brutally whips her with a cat of nine tails. After the beating, she is frightened enough to deliver the baby in the camp, rather than risk going to the hospital. Her greatest fear is that the Matron will take the baby from her if she does not deliver the baby surrounded by her family and relatively hidden in camp. 

The baby is born without problems. The climax of the play follows with the pageantry of Australia Day, an important national holiday. Mr. Neville is addressing the camp, talking down to the natives while at the same time congratulating the whites in the audience for their generosity and magnanimity towards the Aborigines at the settlement. The native children have been rehearsing a hymn for the occasion, but when they begin to sing, the Aboriginal adults begin to sing a parody of it. They drown out the song and refuse to stop. In the ensuing commotion, Jimmy confronts Mr. Neal and challenges him for all the afflictions he has caused their family. Tragically, this results in a heart attack. Jimmy has a heart condition and the stress of the confrontation results in his death. 

Joe is released from prison, but not in time to attend Jimmy’s funeral. He comes back to his family and meets his new baby. They decide to name the baby Jimmy. Afterwards, Joe and Mary sign papers that will allow them to leave the settlement together, on the condition that they can never return to the area. They will be together, but must say goodbye to their families. As they walk away, Gran sings a traditional Aboriginal song. The tone is ambivalent. Joe and Mary can start their lives, but they are also sacrificing a great deal. The families they leave behind are still subject to the same problems as before. It is unclear whether there is reason for optimism, but it is clear that change is necessary. 

No Sugar was released to great acclaim. Author Jack Davis was an Aboriginal playwright born in 1917. The themes of No Sugar—systematic racism, the resulting degradation and brutality that results from it, and the importance of the nuclear family—are illustrated with remarkable clarity by Davis because he personally experienced them. No Sugar is imbued with an authenticity it might otherwise have lacked in less experienced hands, which makes it an invaluable piece of activist art.