AustLit
Latest Issues
Contents
- A Writer's Thirty-Six Years in Radical Theatre : New Theatre's Formative Years 1932-1955 and Their Influence on Australian Drama, single work criticism (p. 1-8)
- A Writer's Thirty-Six Years in Radical Theatre : Perspectives on Mona Brand's Isolation from Mainstream Australian Theatre, single work criticism (p. 9-16)
- Oriel Gray : A Forgotten Playwright, single work criticism (p. 17-27)
- Paths Towards Purpose : The Political Plays of Katharine Susannah Prichard and Ric Throssell, single work criticism (p. 28-38)
-
"Something with a Cow in It" : Louis Esson's Imported Nationalism,
single work
criticism
(p. 39-52)McCallum argues that Esson's attempts to translate the folk dramas of Ireland to an Australian context failed because of the absence of a similar folk background.
- Aspects of the Heroic in Australia Verse Drama : Douglas Stewart, Tom Ingles Moore and Catherine Duncan, single work criticism (p. 53-70)
- Forgotten Poetic Sensibilities : The Plays of Charles Jury and Ray Mathew, single work criticism biography (p. 71-88)
- Sports Lovers and Sports Haters : Attitudes to Sport in Some Australian Plays, single work criticism (p. 89-98)
- The Australian Playwright in the Commercial Theatre : 1914-1939, single work criticism (p. 99-110)
- The Australian Drama Bibliography Project, single work criticism (p. 111-114)
- The Campbell Howard Collection of Australian Plays in Manuscript, single work criticism (p. 115-124)
-
Shipwreck : A Drama in Four Acts,
single work
drama
(p. 125-155)
'The play is set on the lonely Gippsland coast in the late 19th century. Stumpy Johnson lives by the old Cornish trick of luring ships to destruction and collecting and selling the flotsam and jetsam. Martha Kennedy forces her daughter Madge to become Johnson’s second wife. The police catch up with Johnson and he goes to gaol. During his absence his son by his first marriage and Madge fall in love and live together. A child is born. Johnson is released before his full sentence is served, returns and in his vengence kills the baby, shoots his son and chains Madge to the wall of the house. He whips the bullocks with a barb wire lash which flies back and tears his eyes, the bullocks stampede and rush over him and he staggers back to the house, but of course Madge cannot help him, and wouldn't. He dies and Madge is rescued by a passing coastal vessel which calls in, and Johnson’s corpse is taken on board to be tipped over the side when the vessel is at sea.' (Source : University of New England website)
