Red Sky at Morning

Red Sky at Morning is a 1935 Australian stage play by Dymphna Cusack. The play helped launch Cusack's writing career. It was first performed at Sydney Player's Club in September 1935 and adapted for radio in 1938. It was later revived in 1939. The play was published in 1942 along with other Australian plays including Daybreak, Touch of Silk and Interval. The Sydney Morning Herald said "The last scene grips one, though it ends tamely." It was often produced on radio and in amateur theatres during the subsequent years. Noted critic Leslie Rees wrote of the play that: An undertone of passionate resentment against injustice and coercion is heard, but there is also a mannered wit and an acute realisation of character, a clear-cut picture of the times. It is a play of style. Against these considerable merits must be men tioned a sparseness of action, especially the failure to satisfy expectations in the second act. However, the texture of the speech in this play is so fine, the quality of compassion so moving, that such a fault does not, to my mind at any rate, become paramount. To play a curtain-raiser in the same programme would help conceal the deficiency.