Patrick White wrote eight professionally produced plays in his life, the majority of which - as I note in my review of [b:Collected Plays Volume 1|8767569|Collected Plays Volume 1|Patrick White|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347503446l/8767569._SY75_.jpg|13641016] - are inferior to his novels and short stories, even though they all contain fragments of his brilliance.

His two highlights, The Ham Funeral and The Season at Sarsaparilla are featured in that volume. This is very much the "Also ran" pieces White wrote in the last decade of his life, when he found plays a much easier alternative to novels. Big Toys is a dated three-hander about Australia's class divide, sexual mores, and politics (always three of White's favourite subjects). Netherwood is a sort of variation on Sarsaparilla taken to farcical levels, an exploration of human interaction on a Chekhovian scale. There are those who believe that White's plays represent an important landmark in Australian theatre history but - with the exception of The Ham Funeral, his first major theatrical work - I disagree. The works were given lauded premieres (once the establishment finally let him produce them!) and tours to major cities, as part of the White mania that appeared after he won the Nobel in 1973. No doubt to an audience of the era they also had contemporary and cultural resonances. What echoes strongest from the plays now is White's lifelong disdain for corruption, elitists ("overgrown school prefects" were among his list of pet hates), and needless repression, often leading to oppression. That power is still there in the text but what we realise is that, unlike his novels, which only grow stronger with time, the bitterness in White's plays has been superseded by two generations of homegrown Australian writers (three, now that mine are beginning to rise to the fore) and the works have, undeniably, dated.

Strongest of these four is Signal Driver, an eerie meditation on the interaction of mere mortals with a faceless, unforgiving broader society. It is told in three scenes featuring a couple at various stages in their life outside tram and bus stops, haunted by two vaudevillian spirits. It's a strange work, probably unforgiving on stage, but haunting in its way. (I also note that White's plays, once they gained acceptance among the literati, were performed by major theatre companies with leading actors of the day - and in Australia of the 1970s and '80s, those faces were immensely well-known. There was a communal feeling for an audience coming to watch the plays that made them, I believe, more sympathetic toward the text, being performed and directed by people they knew so well. It's also worth noting that even the most successful non-musical theatre production in Australia is going to be seen by, at most a few tens of thousands of people. At absolute most. This was an audience attuned to White's style and reflections on a mainstream Australian culture that continued to strangle the life out of so much that was rich and precious.)

Finally there's Shepherd on the Rocks, the final full-scale item White ever wrote, which premiered in 1987, three years before his death. (He had already forbidden any work of his to be published in 1988, the year of Australia's bicentenary, which he pre-emptively despised.) Shepherd is not mentioned in any book on White I've read, perhaps because it was still too new and had only had the one production. It is a slightly bewildering allegory on the relationship between religion and show business, between our expectations of the charity of others and the charity of ourselves, and... probably some other things that I haven't figured out yet. The play was given a hero's welcome in 1987 with a grand premiere production by the State Theatre of South Australia starring John Gaden, Wendy Harmer, and Geoffrey Rush. I can't find any evidence it has been performed since. Perhaps that is for the best, however, it is no doubt White's Tempest, concluding with its eponymous character directing a monologue to the audience about the choice we all face of whether to believe in magic or science.

As I continue my project to read every word White wrote, I'm glad to have tracked down these late trinkets in the author's canon. I don't doubt the power these plays may have had on individuals, or occasionally entire audiences, during his lifetime. But reading this has only reinforced my belief that his plays were diversions from the man's path of genius, not landmarks along the way. ( )

It has become fashionable in recent years to regard Patrick White - Australia's greatest novelist - as also a great playwright. White struggled to get his plays staged until middle-age, and even then they remained a sort of touchstone of the literati rather than genuine popular successes. Indeed, it was not really until after his death - when these 2 volumes were published - that the plays began to take on a certain mysticism. Since the turn of the century, they have been performed and discussed more regularly.

On the one hand, this is wonderful. White's canon deserves deeper study and more exposure. The Ham Funeral was a pivotal moment in Australian theatre, and The Season at Sarsaparilla is perhaps the best example of White's views on life for the general reader.

At the same time, I must confess to being something of an iconoclast. I don't think any of the other six of White's plays (A Cheery Soul and Night on Bald Mountain in this volume; his later four works in the second volume) have much worth. And Ham, for all its power, is - like so many breakers of tradition - beginning to show its age as it is superseded by children and grandchildren who could fully revel in the New Theatre rather than relying on the combination of shock value and youthful experimentation.

Still, if you're a fan of White, you owe it to yourself to read the first two plays, and perhaps Night on Bald Mountain. They were pivotal moments in his creative life and certainly in his public life (no doubt many of those who attended his plays as a mark of prestige had never actually read his novels!). The curmudgeon of the 1950s and '60s began to come out of his shell as the 1970s wore on. Once he became a luminary, indeed, the elderly White devoted much time to theatre. (So much so, some have argued, that it deprived us of his last novel - the incomplete The Hanging Garden!) He felt that he had found a medium in which he could truly smash idols, in which he could gain that much-desired attention of the younger generations (even though they often confused him), and which caused him much less angst than writing novels.

The Ham Funeral remains shocking on stage but can be dense on the page, aside from the beautiful monologues of the main character. Season perhaps fares the best, with its echoes of dry suburban Australia, its contrasting of neighbours each hiding their sins and fears from the other, and its brutal takedown of "good" (aka censorious and rigid) society. White is often at his best when burning with righteous anger, and perhaps this is why it will be the most lasting of his works. ( )