[5][6] Leslie Rees wrote of the play in his history of Australian drama, calling it "Catherine Shepherd's most considerable "Australian" drama... Perhaps Daybreak lacks the scope of a "full-length" play and has a certain starchiness, along with its fine feeling, but is a worthy conception, a criticism of smug inflexible authority rather than of deliberate tyranny.
Jeanne falls in love with an Englishman called Francis, who is determined to build a utopia with some convicts.
The ship they were meant to flee on was shipwrecked, there were clashes with troops in which Francis was mortally wounded.
"[16] Reviewing a 1939 production at the Independent Theatre the Sydney Morning Herald said "The dramatic thread is not always taut enough to sustain suspense or build up a really gripping climax, but this in no way destroys the play, but it takes from it just that urgency and note of tragedy which would have lifted it on to a higher level of dramatic achievement.
"[17] Reviewing a 1939 radio production Wireless Weekly said "The construction of the play is slightly rambling, and until it is well under way one is not quite certain of the sympathies of its central character.