When examining the link between Australian theatre and the plays of Eugene O’Neill, perhaps America’s greatest dramatist, one is struck by the omissions more than the inclusions in the list of O’Neill plays produced in this country. Of the forty-five plays that O’Neill wrote, only twenty-two have been produced and of these many have been produced but once. His four Pulitzer prize-winning plays (Beyond the Horizon, Anna Christie, Strange Interlude and Long Day’s Journey into Night) have all received Australian productions, yet Strange Interlude has been seen only once (1929) while Beyond the Horizon has been seen twice (1951 and 2002). Anna Christie has not been seen since 1954 after many years in the repertoire of most amateur groups. Only Long Day’s Journey into Night seems to have become part of the established repertoire of Australian companies. This late play of O’Neill received thirteen productions in Australia between 1959 and 2016. Of the O’Neill plays which the Australian public has never had the opportunity to see, The Iceman Cometh seems the most bewildering exclusion.
Eugene O’Neill was born in 1888 to a theatrical family (his father James was a famous tragedian, particularly for his role in The Count of Monte Christo) and this was probably a primary cause of his early restlessness. His nomadic childhood on his father’s national tours led to several unsettled years, including one at Princeton University, from which he was suspended in 1907. There followed a secret and short-lived marriage, work as a merchant seaman, profitless gold prospecting in Honduras, stints as an actor and stage manager with his father, and frequent spells of drunkenness and unemployment. Ill health compelled him to slow down in 1912, and he emerged after six months in a sanatorium cured of tuberculosis and inspired to become a playwright.
This varied background provided much of the material for O’Neill’s plays. His earliest plays were realistic episodes from his seafaring days, including In the Zone (1917) and The Moon of the Caribees (1918). By 1920, with Beyond the Horizon playing to packed houses on Broadway and having earned his first Pulitzer Prize, he was already regarded as America’s leading dramatist by the critics of the day. He followed this with three more Pulitzer Prizes for Anna Christie (1922), Strange Interlude (1928) and Long Day’s Journey into Night for which he also won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936. While his plays continued to be commercial as well as artistic successes, he continued to experiment with unconventional theatre techniques; asides to the audience in Strange Interlude, masks in Lazarus Laughed (1928), classical models in Desire Under the Elms (1924) and Mourning Becomes Electra (1911)—He even used two actors playing the same role in Days Without End (1934). From 1934 to 1946 O’Neill published nothing. The long absence did not seem to affect his ability however. Upon his return to publishing his works commenced with The Iceman Cometh (1946) though many of his better-known plays (i.e., Long Day’s Journey into Night) remained unpublished until after his death in 1953.
In Australia productions of O’Neill’s plays have been linked with many of our most important theatrical advances. The establishment of permanent repertory companies in our major cities was left to Gregan McMahon from Williamsons. He was devoted to the idea of taking “theatre of drama beyond the commercial pot boilers” (Theatre in Australia, 1978, p.153) and set up the Melbourne Repertory Society (amateur) in 1911. The Tait-Williamson amalgamation in 1920 led him to Sydney where he set up the Sydney Repertory Society in 1921. The first season of this new pro-am company in 1925 included O’Neill’s Anna Christie at the New Palace Theatre thus becoming the first fully staged production of an O’Neill play in Australia. Sadly, little is known of the next three O’Neill productions in this country. Strange Interlude was produced in Sydney in 1928 (the same year it received O’Neill’s third Pulitzer Prize) by the Rowe Street Playbox, while an earlier play (The Rope) was produced by Melbourne’s Little Theatre in 1931. Ah, Wilderness! was staged at least twice in this period in Adelaide, the first time in 1937 by the Workers’ Education Association (WEA) Little Theatre. Ile was first staged in 1934 by the Workers’ Arts Club Players in Sydney as part of a popular movement to introduce theatre to the working classes. The WEA Dramatic Society in Brisbane pursued an educational role, promoting both oveseas and Australian social and political drama with particular emphasis on peace and women’s rights, whilst Student/Unity Theatre (also in Brisbane) produced radical plays concerned with working-class struggles, trade union solidarity and anti-fascist propaganda.
Sir Laurence Olivier, Mollie Brown, Doris Fitton, Vivien Leigh and Haydee Seldon at the Independent to see Mourning Becomes Electra in 1948. State Library of New South Wales, Sydney.
It was left to Sydney’s progressive amateur company The Independent to break much of the new ground in regards to O’Neill’s work. In April 1945 they opened an extraordinarily successful season of Mourning Becomes Electra, which was revived in December before being toured by Williamson’s to The Comedy Theatre in Melbourne in 1946. This same production was revived again in 1948, and again to packed houses and standing ovations, touring again to both Adelaide and Melbourne. Such was its reputation that Sir Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh (then themselves touring Australia) took time to see the production. The Independent had been established in May 1930 by Doris Fitton and opened its doors in August 1930, continuing through to 1955 as an amateur company while gradually introducing more professionals onstage and backstage. An attempt for full professional status was made unsuccessfully in 1967 but the company continued until July 1977 in a semi-professional model. Many Australian premieres of O’Neill’s works were due to this company and its visionary leader Doris Fitton, and in some cases these productions remain the only fully staged performances. Premieres included Desire Under the Elms (1951), Mourning Becomes Electra (1945), Moon of the Caribees (1950), In the Zone (1950), Bound East for Cardiff (1950), The Long Voyage Home (1950) and Beyond the Horizon (1951). Their final production of an O’Neill work was a revival of Ah, Wilderness! in 1973. None of the productions ever reached quite the extraordinary level of success of Mourning Becomes Electra—imagine if you will, a commercial promoter touring to Melbourne and Adelaide a play that ran four and a half hours performed by amateurs!!
In 1948 came the Australian professional premiere of Ah, Wilderness! which also became the first professional production of an O’Neill work in this country. This production was interesting also for the fact that it was one of the last productions of another important Sydney company—the Minerva in Kings Cross. The Minerva was an attempt by Sydney to correct an imbalance with Melbourne (Melbourne had five theatres but Sydney only had two following the closure of Her Majesty’s in 1933). The Minerva had a chequered career as a live theatre which ended in 1950 when MGM converted it for use as a cinema though the final page of this venue is unwritten. In 2022 community pressure has arisen to save it and convert it back to live theatre use ironically because Sydney again has a shortage of theatres.
Program cover for SS Glencairn, Independent Theatre, Sydney, 1950
S,B&W Foundation, Sydney
Title page of program for Anna Christie, St James Hall, Sydney, 1951
S,B&W Foundation, Sydney
In March 1950 the Independent Theatre premiered four short O’Neill plays under the title S.S. Glencairn and followed this up in 1951 with premieres of Beyond the Horizon and Desire Under the Elms. It was an interesting project as O’Neill himself did not see the four plays as linked despite using the same characters in all four plays and basing them on the same ship. He stated that the characters were all types he had met while he was a merchant marine so giving them different names in each play was pointless. The idea has been used in Australia several times since, both as S.S. Glencairn or as The Long Voyage Home, while one of the more successful film adaptations of O’Neill’s work used the title The Long Voyage Home based on the four plays.
The early fifties saw a great revival of interest in the works of O’Neill, and it was an interest not restricted to the Sydney companies. In 1951 there were three productions of Anna Christie in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. The Sydney season was staged by The John Alden Company, a group of actors and technicians who had broken away from The Independent in 1948 with the intention of performing Shakespeare. This production was their first break from that artistic policy and was immediately followed by Shaw’s Misalliance. Perhaps not wishing to go “head-to-head” with their former colleagues they then returned exclusively to Shakespeare. The Brisbane production was staged by the University of Queensland Theatre Group as their entry in the 1951 Festival of Australian University Drama held in Brisbane that year. Meanwhile in Melbourne William P. Carr had finally launched a professional drama company under the auspices of The National Theatre Movement. Established in 1935 by Gertrude Johnson, The National Theatre Movement ambitiously set up schools of opera, drama and ballet in the period 1935–39. Professional and important opera and ballet companies followed which started national tours but it was not until 1951 that the professional Actors Company was launched with Anna Christie and June Brown in the title role. The Movement also set up sub-branches including one in Launceston which produced Ile in 1953. Continuing the national interest in the playwright at this time the Metropolitan Theatre in Sydney staged Ile in 1953 as part of a triple bill with Yeats’s Land of Heart’s Desire and Laurence Housman’s Royal Favour. Annie Christie was again revived at the 1954 Festival of University Drama in Sydney by The Old Nick Company from Tasmania (after a Hobart season). One of those cast in this production was John Clark who became Director of NIDA in 1969 until 2004. With these performances came the end of the first—largely amateur—period of Australian O’Neill productions.
From Elizabethan Trust News, no. 16, September 1975, https://www.thetrust.org.au/pdf/trust-news/TN_1975_09_028.pdf
Following a five year break it was left to the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust to commence a professional cycle of productions with Long Day’s Journey into Night (1959). The Trust itself was set up in 1954 after the Royal Tour when Royal Command Performances in both Melbourne and Sydney relied on amateur companies highlighting the need for Government support of the Arts in this country. In 1958 the Artistic Director of the Trust (Hugh Hunt) began to set up an acting company of eight actors to be known as The Trust Players. It was a landmark production in many ways. It was one of four plays in the opening season of Australia’s first major national (touring) drama company (opened 11 March 1959 Elizabethan Theatre Newtown); it was the first production of this important O’Neill work outside of the USA (aside from a try out in Stockholm which preceded the USA premiere) and it was the first major Australian tour by a local professional drama company encompassing Adelaide, Canberra, Perth, Brisbane and Sydney. Unfortunately, it was this very ambitious touring schedule that led to the failure of the Trust Players in 1961, but this in turn led to the formation of The Old Tote Theatre Company (1963) based in Sydney. This Company was established by NIDA (1958) utilising students in their productions with both based at The University of NSW in the former Totaliser buildings of an old racecourse. Their theatre was the former Army Recreation Hall.
Amateur performances continued despite the emergence of permanent professional companies. In 1959 the Sydney Theatre Club opened Desire Under the Elms a full 17 years before the first professional effort. Amateur theatre continued to have an important role in filling the gaps in the theatre landscape for many years.
Anne Fraser’s set design for the 1960 Australian Elizabethan Theatre production of Ah, Wilderness!
Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne
Anne Fraser’s set design for the 1960 Australian Elizabethan Theatre production of Ah, Wilderness!
Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne
The Trust Players opened Ah, Wilderness! In June 1960 at The Elizabethan Theatre Newtown and again toured it nationally. As with their earlier effort the director was Robin Lovejoy though the original acting company of eight was increased to fourteen. Meanwhile in Canberra one of Australia’s oldest amateur companies Canberra Repertory (Est 1932) had started a mini-revival in O’Neill themselves. They gave the Australian premiere of Moon for the Misbegotten in 1961 which was described as a “tremendous theatrical experience” in the Canberra Times newspaper. Using converted public servant accommodation as a performing space (The Riverside Theatre) presented ongoing technical issues for the company, so their best efforts were those relying on performance—this play is a long sprawling poetic piece with little in the way of overt action but the three actors rose to the challenge and the production is legendary in Canberra. Scenes from the production were presented at subsequent Eisteddfods winning many awards. The Australian premiere of The Emperor Jones in 1964 (a double bill with Synge’s Shadow of the Glen) directed by Ralph Wilson presented other difficulties still common in theatre today—the lack of black or coloured performers. Both actors’ performances were praised but those of ‘the emperor’ were in blackface by local Jim Hutchins which must have been interesting to the many foreign diplomats who attended!
Program cover for the 1966 Old Tote production of A Moon for the Misbegotten
S,B&W Foundation, Sydney
Flyer for the Independent Theatre production of Ah, Wilderness!, 1973
S,B&W Foundation, Sydney
1964 also saw two professional productions in Perth and Melbourne. Opening shortly after the Canberra production came the National Theatre of Perth’s The Emperor Jones directed by Edgar Metcalfe who had recently been appointed Director of The Playhouse (1963–84). There appears to be no link between this National Theatre and that established in Melbourne in 1935 by Gertrude Johnson despite her ambitions to have a National Theatre in every city. In Melbourne the MTC included Where the Cross is Made in its special Youth season which was started in 1962 by Malcolm Robertson.
Meanwhile the loss of The Trust Players in Sydney in 1961 meant that the Elizabethan Theatre Trust was without a professional drama company though it maintained its links with the newly formed NIDA on the campus of the University of NSW. A converted portable army recreation hut became the new theatre and was named “The Old Tote Theatre” as was the new company in 1963 under the artistic supervision of Robin Lovejoy. NIDA had its first graduates in 1960. In an interview with Robin Lovejoy & myself in 1982 Mr Lovejoy remembered the 1964 The Emperor Jones performed by NIDA First Year students though in 1995 the NIDA Archives could not locate the records. The 1966 Old Tote season presented A Moon for the Misbegotten directed by Robin Lovejoy and designed by Ron Reid. After a successful inaugural season, it was decided to embark on a national tour together with the three other major companies of the time each presenting a work. The Union Repertory Company (later Melbourne Theatre Company), National Theatre of WA and the SA Theatre Company joined for an endeavour that was brave but under-resourced and it is worthy to note that more people saw the O’Neill play than the other three productions combined.
Whilst the 1967 A Moon for the Misbegotten was undoubtably a success in terms of audience numbers, critical response was mixed. The Melbourne Herald (27/7/1966) stated:
Visually, judged on set and action and grouping, this will probably satisfy most people. The handling of O’Neill’s lines, the essence of the play, seemed to me often less happy.
It surprises me that a producer [sic] of Robin Lovejoy’s intelligence and experience has not drawn from his principal characters a greater unity in style.
In 1970 the Sydney Genesians tackled O’Neill’s mammoth Long Day’s Journey into Night, eleven years after its Australian premiere. The Sydney Morning Herald called it a “gallant attempt” and noted:
…. three and a half hours, counting interval and hiatuses for prompting, is an endurance test for any amateur company. I can think of no other which could have done it better.
In the history of this play in Australia only one other amateur company has attempted it and the 1978 La Boite production featuring Gwen Wheeler was likewise considered a success by contemporary commentators.
More than ten years after the death of the playwright the Union Repertory Company (MTC from 1974) scheduled A Touch of the Poet in its 1972/73 season. This Australian premiere celebrated great performances and sensitive direction and was much admired;
[Malcolm] Robertson directed it without hustling its slow rhythm. [Freddie] Parslow played the tyrannical, old wastrel Major Cornelius Melody; Jennifer Clare gave one of her most tense and moving performances as the mother. Wendy Hughes pointed the way out of the slough of despondency as the daughter, fighting for her future.
In Sydney 1973 saw the Independent embark on a production of Ah, Wilderness! which opened to mixed reviews. This was disappointing given the company’s history of success with O’Neill and the play was specifically chosen to be a commercial success. While it was financially successful it was not enough to slow the company’s decline and The Independent closed in 1977.
The 1970s were a high point in companies sharing productions and scheduling them in home seasons. The MTC took over the very successful production of Long Days Journey into Night from the SA Theatre Company and it opened at Melbourne’s St. Martin’s Theatre on the 19 September 1973. The MTC had played an important role in setting up the new South Australian company and this was clearly reflected in both casting and direction. Brian James, Patricia Kennedy and Neil Fitzpatrick were all familiar names from the MTC while Rodney Fisher had extensive MTC directing credits. The production repeated its Adelaide success in Melbourne, though the Australian (23/10/1973) repeated a common complaint about this work:
One caught the tension in the house and the family’s isolation. It is a production of immense power, though perhaps a little too long.
Program cover for the 1976 Old Tote production of Mourning Becomes Electra
Theatre Heritage Australia
Program cover for the Sydney Theatre Company’s 1979 production of Long Day’s Journey into Night
S,B&W Foundation, Sydney
1976 saw revivals of Desire Under the Elms by The Sydney Actors Company and Mourning Becomes Electra for the Old Tote Theatre Company. In terms of scale both production and financial the two could not have been more different. The first had a short season at the Bondi Pavilion while the Old Tote production was planned and scheduled as part of the American Revolution Bicentennial Celebrations and was destined to raise considerable interest. In keeping with the Bicentennial theme, the American director Edward Payson Call was hired to guarantee ‘authenticity’ and a remarkable cast led by Ron Haddrick, Ivar Kants and Robin Nevin were assembled. Some controversy was caused by the decision to cut the total running time to only three and a quarter hours, and many felt the director then kept to a safe production. The most detailed analysis of the editing appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald (3/4/1976):
Cutting inevitably causes some damage. The omission of the whole sequence of the murder of Adam Bryant by the children of his mistress robbed the play of an almost essential scene. There was also a clumsy chop with an attempt at a lighting bridge in a crucial scene between Orin and his mother. However, one could argue all night about where to cut, and on the whole the surgery has been done skilfully.
The Bulletin (10/4/1976) had no such reservations about the production:
…. this production …works at least for long stretches as a piece of vivid theatre—more than a classic best kept on ice, more than a bicentennial offering.
During 1977 the MTC presented Ray Lawler’s production of Desire Under the Elms. The combination of Australia’s best-known playwright (Summer of the Seventeenth Doll) and this tense O’Neill work promised much given Lawler’s extensive directing and acting credits. Sadly, audiences and critics alike were disappointed with the Melbourne Herald commenting;
As a craftsman-like, low key theatrical exercise, this production works adequately. But it offers no explanation of why Desire Under the Elms should be dug up for Melbourne audiences in 1977.
Long Day’s Journey into Night was given quite a different reception when The Hole in the Wall Theatre revived it in Perth in 1977. The West Australian newspaper (29/8/1977) commented that;
Raymond Omodei’s livid and observant production at The Hole in the Wall fits each piece of the jigsaw into place and helps us forget the undeniably dated aspects of the work without diminishing its stature.
Long Day’s Journey into Night remains the most often produced O’Neill play in this country. The bulk of these have been staged since 1977 with the rest of O’Neill’s considerable output left to languish. La Boite (Brisbane) revived the piece in 1978 while The Ensemble Theatre in Sydney chose it in 1979 as their contribution to the interim season of plays presented at The Drama Theatre Sydney Opera House following the demise of the Old Tote Theatre Company.
The creation of The Sydney Theatre Company in 1979 was a direct result of the final collapse of The Old Tote despite its high profile move as resident company into the new Opera House in 1973. In 1967 the Old Tote was separated from NIDA, moving its headquarters to the old Parade Theatre, in a building still on the UNSW campus. The Old Tote then embarked on a policy of expansion and at the request of the state government it took on the responsibilities of a state theatre company. This led to commitments to stage productions at three theatres (The Parade, The Seymour Centre and from 1973 The Drama Theatre). The Old Tote company also went on to tour some of the shows around Australia, however these additional activities, compounded by lack of financial support from the New South Wales state government, overstretched the company's resources and in 1978 the Old Tote went into liquidation.
Program cover for The Trust Players’ 1959 production of Long Day’s Journey into Night
Theatre Heritage Australia
Just as the perceived need of a major state company based in Sydney led to the creation of The Trust Players in 1959, the creation of The Sydney Theatre Company was seen as a necessity both politically and socially in Australia’s largest city. The inclusion of O’Neill in such an important interim season is a measure of the esteem his writing is held in this country. The 1979 production received almost universal praise for its cast, design and direction. Patricia Connolly appeared as Mary Tyrone where she had played Cathleen in the 1959 Trust Players production—in a sense the wheel had turned full circle in twenty years:
Hers is not grand acting; it is chamber-music playing, a passionate brooding analysis of the fears, tensions and wrenching regrets in the flickering, stammering text. (Sydney Morning Herald, 18/9/1979)
And there was equal praise for Robert Lewis’s direction:
A poor director makes Long Days Journey into Night a long night’s journey into misery. A good one can hook your heart with it. Robert Lewis got close to its heart. (Sun Herald, 16/9/1979)
As former Resident Designer of The Old Tote, Yoshi Tosa’s set was also the cause of much comment:
Particular praise to Yoshi Tosa whose set, a gaunt room with false perspective, makes the actors appear larger than life-size, as O’Neill drew them. (Western Suburbs Courier, 26/9/1979)
Only The Australian (17/9/1979) seemed out of step:
It is a long play, but one felt the actors panting through it as if rushing to their graves.
Director Robin Lovejoy, by now veteran of many Australian productions of O’Neill repertoire, took the helm in 1980 for the QTC Mourning Becomes Electra. While the QTC chose to serve up the long work in one sitting with cuts, which is the commonly accepted way to perform this piece, the 1981 MTC production was the full uncut over four hours original.
John Lee, Sally McKenzie and Pat Bishop in the 1982 MTC production of Mourning Becomes Electra. Photo by David Parker.
Courtesty Melbourne Theatre Company
Sally McKenzie as Lavina in the 1982 MTC production of Mourning Becomes Electra. Photo by David Parker.
Courtesty Melbourne Theatre Company
Mourning Becomes Electra is divided into three plays with themes that correspond to the Oresteia trilogy. Much like the Aeschylus plays Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides, these three plays by O'Neill are correspondingly titled Homecoming, The Hunted, and The Haunted. These plays are normally not produced individually nor have they been in Australia, but only as part of the larger trilogy. Each play contains four to five acts, with only the first act of The Haunted being divided into actual scenes. To resolve the problem of the extraordinary length of the play the MTC chose to present it in two halves over two nights.
In 1980 The Hairy Ape opened in Adelaide. Previously seen in Sydney in 1954 and 1923, as an amateur production it underscores the importance of programming in this sector of the Australian theatre world. Many of O’Neill’s award-winning works, as well as other writers for the stage, are still awaiting a professional presentation though the Melbourne International Festival in 2001 featured The Wooster Group’s (USA) amazing production at The Malthouse.
Ron Graham in Long Day’s Journey into Night, Queensland Theatre Company, 1982. Photo by Derrick George Photography.
Courtesy of Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Brisbane
Monica Maughan in the Playbox production of Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Melbourne, 1982. Photographer unknown.
Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne
1982 continues the run of Long Day’s Journey into Night. An examination of these many productions in such a short time would be interesting, as would be consideration of a possible lack of creativity in the programming departments! None-the-less QTC and Melbourne’s Playbox embarked on their own explorations of this text in March and July respectively. The QTC production was directed by Alan Edwards and designed by James Ridewood. Oddly this risky endeavour was undertaken at a time of cuts to the arts budget by both the State and Federal Governments particularly in Queensland. The Playbox production was directed by Ken Boucher and ran at the St. Martin’s Theatre in South Yarra as had an earlier MTC production. The Playbox production featured Monica Maughan and Malcom Robertson.
Reviews of the QTC production said it was almost perfect in casting and tone while the reviewer for Theatre Australia regretted the QTC had taken the popular path of cutting its length as both he and the audience wanted more. In Melbourne a similar feeling arose particularly concerning the performances of the four actors. Both were surprising financial successes in the midst of budget cuts and helped prove the worth of both these companies to unsympathetic funding bodies. O’Neill productions also continued to be critical and artistic successes in this country but performances by professional companies have dwindled despite a well-received MTC A Moon for the Misbegotten in 1990. Amateur productions continue with revivals of Long Day’s Journey into Night in Adelaide in both 1986 and 2023 (both Independent Theatre SA) and several student productions such as Peter King’s VCA Drama School season in 1986 of Mourning Becomes Electra.
Oddly enough, two of O’Neill’s dramas have become successful musicals. Anna Christie became New Girl in Town while Ah, Wilderness! became Take Me Along. As far as I can establish neither have had Australian productions though others in the industry feel sure the amateur companies would have performed New Girl in Town. An adaptation of The Emperor Jones (President Jones) was performed by Australians at the South Pacific Festival of the Arts in Papua New Guinea but that falls outside the framework of this article.
Program cover for the 1999 MTC production of Long Day's Journey into Night
Theatre Heritage Australia
Robyn Nevin and William Hurt in Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill, co-produced by Sydney Theatre Company and Artists Repertory Theatre, 2010. Photo by Brett Boardman ©
Courtesy Sydney Theatre Company
I have the sense that the rising tide of theatrical nationalism in Australia since the early 1980s, best typified by the sadly lost Playbox Theatre “all Australian seasons” from 1989-2005, led to a real decline in non-Australian works for that period. Certainly, the official funding and artistic policies of State and Federal administrations then have informed the programming decisions of the subsidised sector, while O’Neill is largely seen as uneconomic by the commercial producers. Recent MTC productions of Mourning Becomes Electra (1998) and Long Day’s Journey into Night (1999) as well as the 2010 STC/ART Long Day’s Journey into Night which toured to the USA look like a return to regular programming.
Bibliography
Theatre in Australia, John West (Cassell Australia 1978)
It Won’t Last a Week!, G. Hutton (MacMillan 1975)
Not Without Dust and Heat, Doris Fitton (Harper and Rowe, Sydney 1981)
The Entertainers (Pittman Australia 1980)
Encyclopedia of World Theatre, Martin Esslin (Thames and Hudson London 1977)
McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Drama Vol 3 (L-R) McGraw-Hill Book Company 1972
National Treasure, Frank van Straten (Victoria Press 1994)
The Cost of Jazz Garters, Anne Edgeworth (Canberra Repertory 1992)
Playbox at The CUB Malthouse, Murray Copland (Playbox Theatre Centre 1990)
A History of Political Theatre, Constance Healy (Uni of Qld)
Independent Theatre 40th Anniversary booklet
Canberra Repertory 250th Production (1978) program
Website: AusStage contains cast & crew lists of all these productions
This research initially was undertaken at NIDA in 1982 and the author is grateful for interviews and reflections by Robin Lovejoy (now deceased) at that time. The staff of The Dennis Wolanski Library—then at The Sydney Opera House but now absorbed into the State Library of New South Wales—were invaluable. Thank you Ralph Bott and Vera Hill. The paper was updated in 1996 and included in the NIDA Archives but has not been previously published. If you are aware of any productions missed, please let me know so they can be added to AusStage.
Additional image credits
All endeavours have been made to contact the copyright holders of the images used in this article.
Theatre Heritage Australia would like to thank the following people and organisations for their assistance:
Brett Boardman, Sally McKenzie, Robyn Nevin
Artists Repertory Theatre, Portland, OR
Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne
Melbourne Theatre Company, Melbourne
Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Brisbane
S,B&W Foundation, Sydney
Sydney Theatre Company, Sydney
