Review of After 'The Doll': Australian Drama since 1955 by Peter Fitzpatrick

Abstract

Peter Fitzpatrick has written on exceptionally intelligent, stimulating, and readable book on contemporary Australian drama. His approach is primarily literary and historical (focussing on authors and texts, and on continuities and discontinuities, in the period since The Doll), but he also writes with an unusual sensitivity to theatrical and performance values. The strengths of such an approach are particularly apparent in his discussion of playwrights such as Patrick White and Dorothy Hewett--emphasizing, in White's case, the theatrical innovativeness beneath what is often dismissed as 'literariness' in his drama, and in Hewett's case, offering a convincing account of the scope and seriousness of work which is often seen as mere 'theatricalism'.