Curly on the Rack is a 1958 Australian play by Ru Pullan set in Rabaul after World War II.

Their truck driver, Curly, waits for his opportunity to recover £10,000 he planted on a nearby island during the Japanese invasion along with a fellow soldier called Scobie.

Reviewing the original production, The Bulletin said "the dramatic cliches and tortuous contrivings that go with resolving the situations are rather less thanbearable, and the scene wherein Scobie recovers his manhood and Max reveals his yellow streak must be one of the most preposterous bits of hoo-ha served to an audience for many a day.

"[4] The Sydney Morning Herald said the play "ran a wayward course through melodramatic shallows" and "had an entertaining enough adventure yarn to tell, but Mr Pullan seemed unable to develop the issues of his intriguing first act in a rich way through the stationary second, and then abandoned adventure to turn his third act into a much too rapid_, much too tritely tremulous, much too improbable study of a wrecked man's redemption into full and confident manhood."

Such a failure illustrated how easily managements that are supposed to be highly skilled in evaluating plays can make woeful mistakes.