AN OLDER KIND OF MAGIC

The Bitarrs, Pot-Kooroks, Nyols and Net-Nets of Australian Aboriginal folklore are transplanted here to downtown Sydney where they take part in a veritable epidemic of magic spells aimed at frustrating Sir Mortimer Wyvern's plan to pave over a section of the Botanical Gardens in the name of Commerce. There's something about Rupert and Selina's very civilized games — rummaging around the Gardens and the Ministry where their father's a caretaker — that almost makes us forget that the setting is Sydney rather than London. And, while Sir Mortimer is a captive of the Nyols (and later turned into stone when he hears a dog speak), advertising man Ernest Hawke organizes a demonstration of department store dummies to plead the children's case. According to the afterword, this "shabbier, pretended magic" has been included "for contrast," but the rhetoric of Public Relations and protest only makes the earthy spirits of the Bitarrs and company seem more out of their element than ever. Though Wrightson's use of Australia's indigenous little people is admirable, their appearance in this urban/eclectic fantasy reduces their Older Kind of Magic to the level of child's play.