Harold Love

The Australian Stage represents an interesting intersection between the academic world and the creative arts, between the long perspective of the historian, and the ephemerality of theatre performances. Its methodology is academic; it proceeds from an examination of documents, of written records of an art form only one aspect of which we think of as being written, the actual texts of plays. However, these are not the documents in question (although some bibliographical information about the plays is also included); rather it is the responses to performances, particularly reviews, written reminiscences, playbills, newspaper reports, which provide, collectively, the material for a historical survey of theatre in Australia.

That Neil Warren-Smith was a magnificent singer and actor I knew from having seen him in many Trust and Australian Opera seasons, including the very first in 1956. But his proneness to appear as czars, monks, ancient sages, field marshals and similar dignified personages had concealed from me that he was also a magnificent larrikin. This is a very welcome bonus of what is, sadly, a posthumous autobiography, talked with unblushing frankness down a tape recorder and presented with what seems to have been a minimum of intervention by Frank Salter.