It would require enormous will power to resist the temptation to immediately check the 50 plays promised and whether or not your favourite is included. Spoiler alert: it’s not that simple. There are many more plays and players discussed in Julian Meyrick’s outstanding new history of modern Australia than those of the title. 

It begins with theatrical entertainment of the 19th and very early 20th centuries, which was largely ad hoc or amateur, or both. Two Australian plays (rare in those days) are neatly juxtaposed to illustrate valuable points that should speak to present day impresarios and writers. Steele Rudd’s On Our Selection and Louis Esson’s The Time Is Not Yet Ripe premiered in 1912. The former is a rollicking piece about a family of selectors, while the latter is a well-crafted satire of the squattocracy. The former was a runaway hit countrywide, touring for years, while the latter was popular with the class it skewered and ran for a few weeks. Nevertheless, as Meyrick notes, “…in pursuing a national drama, box-office success is a misleading hare to...