Lester Lamb

Gender Unspecified | 40s | 3 to 5 minutes
Starts on page 21

EXTRACT: Knocks me around to see you like this, boy. Three days we haven't seen you downstairs. You'll starve to death. Look at these poor sods. You don't want to be like them. You don't need to be You've got a roof over your head, family...well, we're not much, but strike... Look, come downstairs. For your mother's sake. Well, do it for Fish. Come on. He's worried sick about you. You know damn well your brother is busted in the head and he'll never grow up right. The least you can do is make him happy.

Oriel

Female | 40s | under 3 minutes
Starts on page 71

EXTRACT: Oriel wakes, remembering her own bare running feet on the dirt of the home paddock when the world was a place given by God for the pleasures of children, when all that was good was unbroken. Then she remembers how all that was broken. She knows that one day soon Hat will be getting married, leaving another hole in the company. Another loss. If Oriel thinks about everything that's been taken from her over the years...The mother who died and left her to bring up a family, the brother shot by a Turkish bullet, and now her own sons...Lord, it's like the longest subtraction sum invented.

REVIEW: THE MAGNIFICENT 'CLOUDSTREET'

SHERIDAN MORLEY, THE NEW YORK TIMES, 22 SEPTEMBER 1999

""Cloudstreet" is a definition of the theater theatrical, and the greatest achievement of all Australian theater to date."