'A play centred on family life in working-class Redfern in the 1950s which captures the colour, spirit and political character of the inner-city suburb. Hewett who lived in Redfern during the Cold War, wrote that her aim was 'to write of a self-contained world ... with its own language, its own folklore, its own values, it’s own ethos, to write of it with both realism and poetry.'
Source: Australian Plays (https://australianplays.org/script/CP-1289/). (Sighted: 22/02/2018)
An exploration of the frustrations of domesticity and marriage in the lives of academic women.
Written in Hewett's freewheeling epic style, The Chapel Perilous is a journey play that spans the period between the 1930s and the late 1960s. The story concerns Sally Banner, an over-reacher who attempts to find fulfilment – whether through her gift of poetic expression, through her sexual relationships, or in later years through political activism - and ultimately finds it through self-acceptance. Thematically the play contains the qualities and concerns which are often associated with Hewett's style – female sexuality, questioning of authority and morality, and anarchic tendencies towards structure in both dramatic text and social attitudes.
As Hewett remarks in her 1979 Hecate article: 'Sally is balanced by several symbolic female figures, the "Authority figures" of Headmistress, Anglican teaching "sister", and mother... [along with the] lesbian love figure, Judith, who stands for intellectual control and denial of sensual love' ('Creating Heroines in Australian Plays', p. 77).
'No two versions of Tatty are alike in this conjuring of fantasies about an enigmatic, ageless blonde. A black comedy about ageing, faded beauty and accepting eccentricity.'
Source: Australian Plays (https://australianplays.org/script/CP-1291/). (Sighted: 22/02/18)
