Many think of their university years as a special time where shoulders were occasionally brushed by future leaders of society. However, the concentration of people who took part in revues and plays at Sydney University during the late 50s and early 60s seems particularly thick with impressive names. Whilst there was a vital dramatic scene from the 1920s onwards, and the success of Ray Lawler’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll were already assured, this was a particularly rich period, a decade or more before we would get over the cultural cringe to produce plays and films that could hold their own on the world stage.

The period 1957-1963 would see an amazing array of talent pass through the university’s productions. Succinctly written by two academics (Laura Ginters and Robyn Dalton), Dalton proves particularly useful as she was not only an undergraduate during this period, she had personally been involved, acting in many productions during this time. In this welcome study the authors show the influence that this concentrated period of dramatics would have on later arts. Of course, some then joined the mass migration to then swinging London where they would make...