Cirrus@Austlit

Collits' Inn was awarded second prize in a competition for an Australian operetta or musical play, promoted in 1932 by Sydney singing teacher Miss Nathalie Rosenwax. Determined to enter the competition, Varney Monk collaborated with her next-door neighbour, newspaper editor T. Stuart Gurr, after telling him a story she had heard while holidaying in the Blue Mountains some years before. Despite being awarded second place to The Island of Palms by Arnold R. Mote and Margery Browne, the musical was deemed more suitable for immediate production, and was subsequently staged by Rosenwax later that same year at Sydney's Savoy Theatre. Comprising a mostly amateur cast, it received a good deal of positive criticism. Much of the credit was directed to well-known professional singer and variety star Rene Maxwell (as Mary Collits), along with the richly orchestrated arrangements of conductor Howard Carr (who had previously been associated with George Edwardes's musicals in London). The orchestra, too, was ably led by the composer's husband, the well-known violinist Cyril Monk.

Following the initial production, Carr, on the urging of Varney Monk, approached producer F. W. Thring in Melbourne. Although primarily a film exhibitor at the time, Thring was contemplating a move into production. One of his ideas was to increase the possibility of world-wide distribution by trying out local material on the stage first and, if the production were successful, transferring the story to film. Following Carr's pitch, Thring invited Monk to meet with him and, according to her, the entrepreneur accepted Collits' Inn at that meeting. The musical was extensively revised, however, for its professional debut at Melbourne's Princess Theatre.

Collits' Inn was scheduled to be turned into a cinematic release by Frank Thring's Efftee film company, but this eventually fell through. The venture only proceeded as far as screen tests for the roles of Mary and Lake. Negotiations with British entrepreneur Charles B. Cochran were also started, but Thring's death in 1936 saw this opportunity shelved indefinitely.

Bronwyn Arthur claims that Collits' Inn holds its place in Australian music theatre history as the first occasion on which Australian audiences were offered their own history and idiosyncratic characters on the professional stage (Arthur, p.133). Research into the professional variety theatre industry indicates, however, that distinctive Australian characters and situations had been celebrated in Australian revusicals from at least 1916 (see Clay Djubal, 'What Oh Tonight', Chapter 6). The 1933/1934 Efftee productions certainly qualify as Australia's first attempt to replicate the modern American musical genre that had begun to emerge following the Broadway debut of Showboat in 1927.