Quick questions on David Williamson and Australian political comedy: HSC Drama core

Born 24 February 1942 in Melbourne. Trained as a mechanical engineer at Monash University; worked as a lecturer at Swinburne Technical College in the late 1960s. Started writing plays at La Mama and the Pram Factory in the late 1960s. The Removalists (1971) and Don's Party (1971) made him the dominant Australian playwright by the mid-1970s.

The Removalists (Pram Factory, 1971). Two Melbourne policemen, the older Sergeant Simmonds and the younger Constable Ross, attend a domestic call. Kate, the young wife, has been beaten by her husband Kenny. The play follows the police's progressive abuse of authority: their patronising of Kate, their rough handling of Kenny, and finally their beating of Kenny to death. The removalist of the title is a furniture mover who witnesses the violence.

Travelling North (Nimrod, 1979). A late-life romance set against an older man's decision to move to Queensland. Williamson treating ageing, partnership, and the politics of family.

Williamson has written prolifically into his eighties. Influence (2005), Let the Sunshine (2009), When Dad Married Fury (2012), and Rupert (2013, on Rupert Murdoch) continued his comic-political method. Critical assessments have varied; some critics see the later work as repeating its earlier method without the same sharpness. Other writers (Hannie Rayson, Andrew Bovell, Patricia Cornelius) have taken up the space.

Recognisable Australian speech. Williamson catches the cadence of middle-class Australian English. His dialogue is dense with idiom but not exaggerated; it reads as overheard.

Williamson has been criticised across his career for staying in the same middle-class Anglo-Australian world (the Pram Factory and the dinner party). Indigenous theatre, multicultural Australian theatre and feminist theatre developed in part in reaction to and against the limits of the Williamson world.

The most commonly studied plays for HSC purposes are The Removalists, Don's Party, and The Club. Major productions of each in the last decade include the STC's 2015 The Removalists (directed by Iain Sinclair) and Belvoir's regular revivals.

Two Melbourne policemen, the older Sergeant Simmonds and the younger Constable Ross, attend a domestic call. Kate, the young wife, has been beaten by her husband Kenny. The play follows the police's progressive abuse of authority: their patronising of Kate, their rough handling of Kenny, and finally their beating of Kenny to death.

Set at a Melbourne dinner party on the night of the 1969 federal election. The host (Don) is a Labor supporter watching Labor lose to Gorton's Liberals. Eleven characters across the night.

Williamson at his most institutional. The Department satirises a Melbourne tertiary institution's engineering department.

Set in the boardroom of an unnamed but plainly Carlton-modelled Melbourne football club. Six characters: the president, the coach, the captain, the secretary, the recruiting officer, and the new star player. The play examines power inside an institution that has commodified Australian masculinity and the conflict between traditionalist and modernising football administration.

A late-life romance set against an older man's decision to move to Queensland. Williamson treating ageing, partnership, and the politics of family.

Domestic and political plays of the 1980s. Sons of Cain is a study of investigative journalism and political corruption.

A Melbourne writer's move to Sydney, satirising Sydney's celebrity culture and the trade-offs of artistic compromise. The play is partly autobiographical.

A workplace sexual harassment claim and its messy reception in a Melbourne courthouse. Williamson examines the political ground of the workplace itself.