''The Path of the Eagle'' is a 1943 Australian radio play by

Catherine Duncan Catherine Duncan (17 March 1915 – 14 August 2006) was an Australian documentary filmmaker, actor, playwright, film researcher, script writer, film critic, archivist, and collagist. She is most well known for her work in radio broadcasts and s ...

. It was originally written under the title ''Succubus''. The play was a telling of the

Oedipus Oedipus (, ; grc-gre, Οἰδίπους "swollen foot") was a mythical Greek king of Thebes. A tragic hero in Greek mythology, Oedipus accidentally fulfilled a prophecy that he would end up killing his father and marrying his mother, thereby ...

story. It was broadcast by the ABC as part of a series of ten verse dramas on radio. The others included '' The Golden Lover'', '' The Real Betrayal'', ''

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'', ''

It Has Happened Before ''It Has Happened Before'' is a 1943 Australian verse drama written for radio by Dorothy Blewett Dorothy Blewett (1898–1965) was an Australian writer and literary agent. She also wrote as Anne Praize or Ann Praize. Several of her plays were ad ...

'', ''Mined Gold'', '' The Unmapped Lands'', '' Brief Apocalypse'', ''

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'' and '' Richard Bracken-Farmer''. The play was first produced in 1943. It was produced again later that year, and then in 1951. The play was published in a collection of radio plays in 1946 called ''Australian Radio Plays''. Reviewing this, the ''Herald'' said the play "proves that in drama... it is not necessary for Australians to rely in terminably on the inspiration of a 'sunburnt culture.' She reverts to the ancient Greeks. The plot of her ambitious work — in verse — is based on a modern interpretation of the Oedipus theme, giving rise to some splendid passages full of rich imagery and passion, building up to a tragic climax." According to Leslie Rees, "The author’s chief talent in this play is for finding a rhythm, exploiting a sure ear for yearning cadences. They are cadences that can catch coloured words out of past or present and out of exotic places, using them to make a richly associative emotional pattern. Sometimes this facility runs away with the writer, so that the sense of character, though it is there, emerges less vividly than the verbal texture... The play’s theme is the unreality of the ivory-tower attitude of mind, but the play itself cannot altogether escape the charge of being unreal."

Premise

According to ''The Bulletin'', "It shows a family, James and Sandra, man and wife; and Leo and Connie, their children. They shut themselves in a kind of ivory tower, away from the war, and are brought into contact with it by the visit of Brian, an air-man, and Lysle, his sister. Leo, a scholar, falls in love with Lysle, finds he can’t ignore the war. Sandra reveals herself as pathologically possessive, Connie’s husband is killed."

References

{{reflist

Sources

*Australian Radio Plays Leslie Rees (editor), Sydney : Angus and Robertson, 1946 anthology radio play

External links

The Path of the Eagle
at Ausstage Australian verse dramas 1943 Australian radio dramas 1951 Australian radio dramas Australian radio dramas that have been published