Sing for St. Ned

Sing for St. Ned is a 1951 Australian stage play by Ray Mathew about Ned Kelly.
The play was described as a "fantasia". It was critically acclaimed, receiving special mention in the Jubilee Play Competition but struggled to be produced as was the case with many Australian plays of its era. Nonetheless, it is regarded as one of Mathew's key works.
The play anticipated the musical satire of later Australian works such as The Legend of King O'Malley with its use of improvisation and Brechtian techniques.

Reception

One writer called it "partly a parody of Stewart's Ned Kelly, and includes group asides, soliloquies, and direct audience address".
Eunice Hanger wrote the play "makes a Brechtian melange of the Kelly story, seen by the Kellys and by the actors playing the story, with singing, farce, real tragedy, and debunked heroics. The audience are invited to join in the singing. The dead characters get up and sing at the end. The characters Ned, Byrne, and Dan stop acting and argue Ned's case from the vantage-point of the contemporary scene; and every now and then a scene is played straight,
and by contrast with the rest is very moving."
The play most completely removed from
Leslie Rees argued Matthews was "ahead of his time with" the play although he also felt it "did not quite 'jell'".