'Set in the staff room of an all-girl school, 'Morning Sacrifice' interrogates the stifling sexual morality of post-War Australia. The all female cast are divided by the conflict between a waning Victorian sensibility and the sexual freedom of the coming age.
'The play is a powerful critique of how women’s sexuality was controlled by law, and hostility between women formed a barrier to emancipation.'
(Source: publisher's blurb)
A family is trapped by rising flood waters.
The main theme of the play is the clash between Jane Franklin, a woman of outstanding character and advanced ideas, and the Colonial Secretary, John Montague, leader of the autocratic officials.
Deals with the clashes between Sir John Franklin and the remnants of the 'Arthur Faction', principally the Colonial Secretary and the Chief Police Magistrate. Franklin's position is made the worse by a well-meaning but thoughtless Private Secretary....The Colonial Secretary is upheld and Franklin is disgraced and recalled, but his influence, in the form of the work he has done and the work of his wife, 'Jane, My Love', for the Colony, compensate for his official humiliation. Lady Jane Franklin is the dominating character who by her charm, poise, intellect and vision of the future commands respect, attention and affection. (The Campbell Howard Annotated Index of Australian Plays 1920-1955 (1993) edited by Jack Bedson and Julian Croft (1993):341)
