When A. A. Phillips coined the term ‘cultural cringe’ to describe Australians’ relationship to their own culture in 1950, it was immediately embraced as an incisive way to describe the effects of the country's colonial history on its self-identity. The gist of the cultural cringe was that Australians were so obsessed with well-bred Englishness as the measure of greatness that nothing of their own would ever be up to scratch. These days it has become fashionable to pronounce the death of the cultural cringe in Australia, just as it is also fashionable within the humanities to regard the dynamic between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture as passé. Kath Leahy's scintillating work is an important reminder not only of the potency of these things in Australia's post-1788 history, but also of their subtly continuing relevance.

Lords and Larrikins is in many ways an exquisite diatribe directed at the cocktail of prejudices and insecurities which have allowed – and still allow – certain actors to be deemed suitable for leading roles in Australian theatre while relegating others to the role of low player. It covers the history of Australian theatre from the construction of the first Theatre Royal in 1830s Sydney to ‘the great Hamlet controversy’ among Melbourne theatre critics in the 1860s, on to the rapscallion vaudeville of the 1920s and the explosion of Australian drama and comic theatre which took place in the 1970s. An enjoyable air of invective infuses Leahy's prose, whether she is discussing the fawning response to Lawrence Olivier's Australasian tour in 1948, or the continuing disadvantages suffered by actors of working-class and non-white backgrounds in Australian theatre today. Leahy's work is also a sustained love song to the low player: the mischief-maker or ‘larrikin’, to use Australian parlance. Best exemplified by the vaudeville comedian-turned-radio and film star, Roy Rene, she argues that the larrikin fool has occupied a position of extraordinary potency in the Antipodes. Since everyone Down Under has been affected by the cultural cringe, the fool's mockery of high pretensions has provided cathartic delight across the social spectrum.

One of the most valuable aspects of Leahy's work is that it demonstrates the significance of theatre for Australian culture writ large. There is still a reluctance to recognize this among non-theatre historians and publishers in Australia, and my big hope for Lords and Larrikins is that its value will be recognized outside theatrical circles as well as within them. This is a book which should be set reading in courses on gender and cultural studies and Australian history as well as devoured by anyone interested in the history of high and low playing, Shakespearean performance and Australian masculinities. Each chapter bulges with fascinating characters, focusing on actors who have played Hamlet and the Second Gravedigger respectively over the years. Animated by Leahy's spirited and sometimes acerbic prose, Lords and Larrikins is also that rare and happy thing: a historical work that is not only instructive and politically relevant, but also a sheer pleasure to read.