| 1. Introduction |
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Jim McNeil was one of the most unlikely playwrights to emerge during the flowering of Australian drama in the 1970s. A recidivist prisoner, he wrote his three best-known plays while still in gaol. Although his artistic career was only of short duration an
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| 2. Jim McNeil |
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When Martin Esslin, the eminent critic and author, read Jim McNeil's play How Does Your Garden Grow?, he wrote to him saying: 'This work shows you to be a playwright of the first rank, not only in Australia but probably internationally as well'.
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| 3. The Chocolate Frog |
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The content
The Chocolate Frog is unashamedly didactic. The play presents the arguments for and against the prison system. The opposing views are the expression of the two different worlds of the play: the inside and the outside. Kevin expresses the
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| 4. The Old Familiar Juice |
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The content
A reworking of his first play, The Last Cuppa, The Old Familiar Juice is more complex and has a superior dramatic quality when compared to The Chocolate Frog. The play examines the relationships between three men enclosed in a cell for si
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| 5. Topics for discussion |
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'He's the only natural playwright I've met who knows instinctively how the dramatic mode works,' Katharine Brisbane, theatre critic, said of McNeil. How is this instinctive understanding of drama evident in both plays?
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| 6. Reviews and notes |
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The author was not in the audience on Monday when the Melbourne Theatre Company presented his two pieces of evidence, a timely comment on the Pentridge inquiry.
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