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

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.

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.

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.

Continued domestic and political satire.

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

The Carlton lounge, the dinner party, the boardroom, the family kitchen, the law office. Williamson's politics enter through ordinary middle-class spaces.

Police violence, election nights, football administration, sexual harassment, media power. Williamson is interested in how institutional power is exercised and disguised.

The plays are written to be funny on the page. The audience laughs, then realises the joke has carried an argument.

Williamson writes ensemble plays. The Removalists has five characters; Don's Party eleven; The Club six. Each is given dramatic and comic space.