When the Gravediggers Come

When the Gravediggers Come is an Australian play by Robert Amos. It won the 1961 Australian Journalists Award for Best Play along with The Tower by Hal Porter. Amos had lived in China before arriving in Australia in 1949.[1]

When the Gravediggers Come
Written byRobert Amos
Date premiered27 March 1963 (1963-03-27)
Place premieredEmerald Hill Theatre, Melbourne
Original languageEnglish

Amos wrote several radio plays but this was his first stage play. The play made its debut at the Emerald Hill Theatre in Melbourne under Wal Cherry, during a season of Australian plays. This was very rare at the time.[2][3]

Leslie Rees wrote "When I first read the script... it seemed to me a living document, full of atmosphere and vivid personalities, offering pungent comment on our changing times, with their questioning, hope and despair." Rees helped the play be produced but later thought "This play had universal elements, but its foreign remoteness of scene probably predisposed numbers of playgoers to ignore its searching analysis of the modern complex of life."[4]

Premise

In 1949, White Russian emigrants living in a town in China await the arrival of the Red Army.

References
  1. "Joint Award in AJA play contest". The Sydney Morning Herald. 20 April 1962. p. 5.
  2. "News of the day". The Age. 23 March 1963. p. 2.
  3. "REVIEWS THEATRE Norman Blood and Russian Gore", 105 volumes : illustrations (chiefly coloured), portraits (chiefly coloured) ; 30-40 cm., The bulletin., John Ryan Comic Collection (Specific issues)., Sydney, N.S.W: John Haynes and J.F. Archibald, 85 (4339), 13 April 1963 [1880], ISSN 0007-4039, nla.obj-701249046, retrieved 20 August 2023 – via Trove
  4. Rees, Leslie (1987). Australian drama, 1970-1985 : a historical and critical survey. p. 358.
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