Adopting a thematic rather than chronological arrangement, this co-authored book surveys representations of men and masculinity in post-war Australian theatre. Its searching and sophisticated analyses draw upon playscripts, critical records and archival material, including screen versions of stage productions. The study is organized around two distinct periods of Australian theatre history: the 1950s to 1970, during which time a national theatre movement flourished, and the mid-1980s onward. Whilst some attention is given to different genres, discussion centres primarily on realist works from the mainstream. Several plays usually omitted from orthodox theatre histories, such as Barry Pree's A Fox in the Night (1959), are given detailed treatments.

Men at Play makes a timely contribution to current social and scholarly debates about masculinity. As Butler, Sedgwick and others have argued, gender is constituted through performative acts, and a resulting premise of this book is that ‘masculinity is theatrical’ (p. 2). Theatre, moreover, is shown to play an active role in social constructions of gender, serving as a ‘laboratory experimenting with and disseminating new ways of thinking about and performing gender’ (p. 12). A key insight here is that Australianness itself has largely been defined by and conflated with ideas of masculinity, and the stage, thus, became a site for ‘performing the masculinity of the national character’ (p. 33, original emphasis).

Masculinity is constantly in flux, and the word incorporates complex, socially negotiated images and values comprising ‘myths, stereotypes and caricatures’ (p. 5). In Australia, the problem of masculinity has specific characteristics, and it is rendered, often, through familiar figures: the bushman and the ocker, the bully and the businessman, the digger, fathers and sons. More recently, it is evinced through the energetically assertive style and sexuality of the ‘wog boy’. Several of the plays discussed examine the role of bullying in ‘policing’ gender norms; others explore the problematics inherent in masculinity and fatherhood, particularly as these are inflected through indigenous characters, where the absence of the father is associated with a loss of male identity and spiritual knowledge. Often, male violence becomes a mode of emotional expressivity, while an associated habit of inarticulacy prompts a particular form of realist – perhaps Method-inspired – acting style. Some post-war plays reinscribe normative gender roles; others, such as Lola Montez (1958), explore gender anxieties and ambivalences, queering stereotypical representations. Later works have been explicit in representing gay men, but the mainstream theatre of today ‘remains a place where gay masculinities have to be presented with the utmost care’ (p. 138).