Comets Soon Pass

1943 Australian play by Dymphna Cusack

Comets Soon Pass is a 1943 Australian play by Dymphna Cusack. It won the 1943 WA Drama Festival Award.[1] (She had won it the year before with Morning Sacrifice.[2]) The play was produced in Perth and in army camps.[3] Leslie Rees called the play a "political-disquisitory".[4]

According to Cusack's biography the play "was her personal catharsis and artistic reprisal for the defection of her former lover, the novelist Xavier Herbert, and payback to the 'asparagus king' Gordon Edgell, who had tried to damn her publicly for her activism on behalf of unemployed youth."[5]

The play was published in a 1950 collection of Cusack's plays.[6][7]

## Premise

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A group gather in the house of a doctor during a flood.[8]

## References

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1. ^ ""COMETS SOON PASS"". Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners' Advocate. No. 20, 964. New South Wales, Australia. 15 December 1943. p. 4. Retrieved 13 March 2024 – via National Library of Australia.
2. ^ "DYMPHNA CUSACK WINS DRAMA FESTIVAL AGAIN". The Newcastle Sun. No. 7994\. New South Wales, Australia. 4 August 1943. p. 2. Retrieved 13 March 2024 – via National Library of Australia.
3. ^ "Books In Brief". The West Australian. Vol. 66, no. 20, 056. Western Australia. 28 October 1950. p. 20. Retrieved 13 March 2024 – via National Library of Australia.
4. ^ Rees, Leslie (1987). Australian drama, 1970-1985 : a historical and critical survey. Angus & Robertson. p. 208\. ISBN 978-0-207-15354-9.
5. ^ Marilla North, 'Cusack, Ellen Dymphna (Nell) (1902–1981)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cusack-ellen-dymphna-nell-12385/text22259, published first in hardcopy 2007, accessed online 13 March 2024.
6. ^ "BOOK REVIEWS". News. Vol. 55, no. 8, 470. South Australia. 29 September 1950. p. 12. Retrieved 13 March 2024 – via National Library of Australia.
7. ^ "Plays Show Progress In Planning". The Advertiser (Adelaide). Vol. 93, no. 28, 715. South Australia. 21 October 1950. p. 6. Retrieved 13 March 2024 – via National Library of Australia.
8. ^ ""COMETS SOON PASS."". The West Australian. Vol. 59, no. 17, 863. Western Australia. 9 October 1943. p. 4. Retrieved 13 March 2024 – via National Library of Australia.

## External links

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* Comets Soon Pass at Ausstage