The exception is Cody Versus Cody by the Melbourne writer Leonard Radic. This play was first performed by the now defunct Australian Theatre in 1975 and published by Playlab in 1980. Like all the plays in the series it has been produced at least once before publication, a practical and prudent policy by the publishers through which they offer for sale plays which have, as it were, been ‘factory tested’.

The introduction to the two volumes of One-Act Plays for Festivals suggests that these plays, at least, have been chosen specifically to appeal to the many little theatre ground abounding in south-east Queensland. It seems that these groups are developing a preference for Australian plays, even perhaps for plays by Queensland writers, though this should not prevent groups outside Queensland from giving them serious attention. They are all modern in style, generally vague as to location and written in lucid Australian English. They are good plays, lacking regional bias and chosen with an eye to the difficulties amateur groups often encounter in finding a suitable plays to show off their talents and which can be stylishly performed without elaborate sets or lighting plots. They offer a long-overdue escape from the handful of outdated English one-actors such groups have so often been forced to fall back on. At last some relief for the hapless adjudicator having to decide between an indifferent rendering of The Monkey’s Paw and a well intentioned try at The Dear Departing!

Two of the books in this series are not, strictly speaking, plays but children’s musicals. Raggedyanne, first performed in 1969 and since revised slightly, is a musical fantasy aimed at children between four and ten. Although it calls for a cast of over twenty and can hardly be thought of as a low-budget production, it had a highly successful three-month seasons at Sydney’s Independent Theatre in 1970 and was revived for an equally successful three-month run at the Brisbane Arts Theatre in 1979. It is obviously worth considering by any group planning to mount a show during school holidays. Man of Steel¸ described as a musical spoof, aims at the high school market. It can be performed by high school students for high school students, though it requires an enormous cast and, I suspect, would be sheer hell for all but the most dedicated to produce. Nevertheless it has had two productions in Brisbane so it is obviously good enough to avoid the danger that the cast might outnumber the audience.

The other titles in the series are orthodox two- or three-act plays. Some have subtitles designed to attract the eye of little theatre groups searching for a certain sort of play. From the Fourteenth Floor You Can See the Harbour Bridge is subtitled ‘a romantic comedy’, Not Evan A Mouse is ‘a thriller’, The Bottom of the Birdcage is, surprisingly, ‘an anti-thriller’ which, the author explains in a prefatory note, means ‘we should not be misled by the elements of mystery and humour in the play into expecting either a thriller or a situation comedy’. These are solid, well-crafted plays meant to do no more than simply entertain, ideal for well-established repertory groups whose audiences prefer an occasional night in the theatre as a relief from television.

Lorna Bol’s Treadmill¸ first published by Playlab 1977 and now in its second impression, has had a well-deserved success not merely because it belongs to that sad minority of plays calling for an all-female cast but because it is a very persuasive dramatization of life among lower class, barely educated women in Australia in the days before Women’s Lib. Its arguments about the social role of women is more powerful for being implicit in the tangled relationship between mother and daughters. Like Treadmill, Cody Versus Cody has a basic seriousness and again it concerned with women’s social role, only this time the oppressive aspects of middle-class marriage are debated by a wife and husband who is literally and metaphorically her judge. The wife, of course, can’t win.

Jill Shearer’s Echoes and other Plays are not so easily described. In many ways simpler and yet inescapably more profound, they reveal a poetic imagination which gently challenges our notions of the actual and the logical in symbolist and surreal ways which puzzle as they delight.

Altogether, there is something in this series to suit the most varied theatrical taste and, for those who enjoy, as I do, reading plays at least as much as seeing them performed, it makes a welcome addition to our small but happily growing body of printed dramatic literature.