Sadly, the book’s epilogue is not an expanded Quod erat demonstrandum, because such a summary has not been earned. Instead, Radic professes a qualified optimism, diagnosing the current problems of Australian theatre as stemming, at least in part, from the fact that ‘our drama revolutionaries of the 1970s succeeded beyond their wildest dreams’. He instances the variety and volume of play-writing canvassed in his chapters. What is lacking? Primarily, he says, the larrikin vitality that characterised our new writing for the stage in the 1970s.

This is akin to calling up a desired future through a rear-view mirror. Radic recommends frequent revivals, programmed beside new plays; a worthy ideal, but hardly a major remedy. More germane, but hardly beyond a motherhood statement: ‘there is a marked reluctance to engage with the big issues of the day: in particular war, poverty, refugees, governmental duplicity, the decline in idealism, and terrorism.’

Radic is right: the concerns of new plays must include the big issues of the day. But to make their point they must be addressed in forms peculiarly suited to the work of live actors on stage. Television delivers naturalism far better; cinema has claimed the special effects spectacular. What is unique about live performance is its power to excite a more active response in an audience than either large or small screen can do. We should go to the theatre to feel more alive, which is Barrie Kosky’s point in his often repeated delight at walkouts and booing in response to his productions.

What is missing from this book, as from The State of Play, is a passion, focused to illuminate shocking insights, exciting near misses, and the rare life-enhancing evenings provided by Australian plays, first in performance, later reinforced by reading the text. This is the double mode in which Radic has encountered the vast majority of the plays whose plots he deftly summarises, and on whose measure of success he briefly comments.

The publisher’s blurb on the book’s back cover concludes: ‘It is a critic’s book, designed for both students and theatregoers.’ In fact, it is a reviewer’s book that will be of significant help as a crib for both teachers and students of Australian drama. The very comprehensiveness of its spread virtually ensures a kind of flattening, both of emotional and intellectual response. Thirty-four plays by David Williamson are listed in the index, not chronologically, but alphabetically by title. Such thoroughness can, of course, be justified. And thirty-five titles by Daniel Keene? Perhaps, with the admirable special pleading that Radic offers. But surely not twenty-seven plays by Barry Dickins! I do not quibble with John Romeril’s eighteen listings, each the subject of succinct judgment.

Two comments are obviously called for. First, Radic is a kind of senior general practitioner in Australian drama: his practice has been long and busy; he is devoted to his craft, but has only the briefest time for each consultation. His book is, in fact, only one degree above those ‘Casebooks’ produced in New York, summarising each play by a significant writer, and providing some press notices and a modicum of interpretation. They are single, slim volumes, each devoted to a playwright. In about 320 pages of text, Radic provides a similar service to the student, but he covers roughly a hundred Australian playwrights. The cover can only be thin, the topography virtually featureless.

The other comment jostling to be made is that this is necessarily a Melbourne-centred book. For instance, while six of Matt Cameron’s plays attract comment, there is only Wolf Lullaby from Hilary Bell’s output, and only Blue Murder (published) and the unpublished Fred by Beatrix Christian. (The latter received a Melbourne Theatre Company production.) How could Radic reasonably be expected to know Christian’s The Governor’s Family (Company B, Belvoir) or Old Masters (STC), as Currency Press has declined to publish her since Blue Murder? Perhaps the publisher will show an interest in her current screenplay, Jindabyne.

It is by no means the case that Radic shows less care for women playwrights than for men. His comments on Dorothy Hewett’s work, and to a slightly lesser extent on Alma de Groen’s, are often incisive and sometimes memorable. Hannie Rayson and Joanna Murray-Smith receive more considered discussion than their peers Andrew Bovell and Michael Gurr.

To revert to regionality, there is no mention, in a paragraph on significant women directors, of Rosalba Clemente at the State Theatre, South Australia. Sydney, on the other hand, is generally accorded due weight, though one wonders whether composer Terence Clarke and actor/writer Richard Roxburgh, had they been Melbourne-based, would have had their surnames misspelt in a book otherwise commendably free of egregious errors.

Finally, I must draw attention to an aspect of this book’s text which gives me serious concern. As a conscientious reviewer, the last thing I did before sitting at the keyboard to write was to select at random two pages in the text, and to compare them with Radic’s treatment of the same material fifteen years earlier, in The State of Play. I was curious to see whether, among other things, he had revised his judgements.

To the contrary, I was surprised and disappointed to find, under Ron Elisha and Einstein, and then under Louis Nowra and Inner Voices, verbatim repetition of phrase after phrase, both descriptive and judgmental. I find it alarming that no editor or publisher’s reader seems to have made the sort of simple check that I did. I am presuming in the author’s favour that he has simply returned to his original notes and/or published reviews, and has copied phrases that still appealed to him without adverting to their still current prominence in The State of Play.

Having made these disturbing finds on my first and second dips into the earlier book, I felt obliged to continue. My third random opening, at David Williamson’s Celluloid Heroes, revealed facts and judgement repeated, but in significantly different prose. One cannot fairly ask for more. I needed to look no further.

In likening Leonard Radic to a general practitioner in the field of Australian drama, I found myself reminded of the need for specialists whose diagnoses, whose insights, and whose elegance of phrase (if we are lucky) will enable the rest of us to join the dots more meaningfully as we endeavour to trace the shape of this singularity, Australian theatre. It is as difficult to capture in photographic, naturalistic detail as is dramatic action itself. As for emulating David Hare, that surely comes later. Hamlet knew precisely what The Mousetrap was before he used it as bait. Until a distinguished member of our élite class of specialists publishes a book that covers much the same ground as Radic’s, we must make do with Contemporary Australian Drama. Meanwhile, we have perhaps the opportunity of reviving with an altered meaning a once-popular publisher’s description: Radic’s is a commonplace book.