The play involves the principles of celebration and reconciliation, providing a "rich theatrical experience with song, dance, humour, and powerful incident.

Eek Perkins owns the town's General Store, lends money and is a lay preacher.

Eek's wife Edie Perkins is a deaf old lady who recites snatches of Victorian poetry.

Their daughter Polly Perkins is a Pollyanna type who is courted both by the youthful store assistant Jack Tuesday and the middle-aged travelling salesman Cecil Brunner.

Polly's half-sister Lily Perkins (Touch of the Tar) is the last surviving member of the town's Indigenous community.

Lily is the "town slut", but is in love with Jack's brother Harry Tuesday, who has been jailed for stealing a sheep.

Her sister Clemmy Hummer, an ex-tightrope walker from Wirth's Circus, is Master of Ceremonies for the Night People.

Act I (1912–14) begins with an eerie Night scene, as all the Dark characters do a rustic Morris clog dance.

Jack is excited during the performance, leaps onto stage to rescue Desdemona, and then delivers a rousing music hall song, which impresses all present.

Years ago, Eek led a massacre of Aborigines camped in the creek bed, urged on by the Mukinupin wives, jealous of the men's frequent visits to the women.

[2] Although seemingly a light story of romance between two related couples, The Man From Mukinupin incorporates darker themes: the treatment and marginalisation of Aboriginal people; the impact of the Great War on Australian country towns, and the problems of a barely habitable environment degraded by salination due to over-farming.

[2] The play is loaded with literary allusions, so that "high art envelops stringent and articulate social criticism".

[3] These range from pagan fertility chants, a Lay of Ancient Rome, Tudor Epithalamiums, snippets of four Shakespeare plays, rewrites of traditional Australian folk songs, short recitations from Browning, Tennyson, Longfellow, Mary Gilmore and Henry Lawson, and excerpts from the more moralistic Victorian poets.

[4] The original music was composed by Jim Cotter, ironically written while waiting for the birth of his own twins.

[6] The commission of Hewett to write a sesquicentennial contribution was met by public dismay in Western Australia, in part due to a campaign against her by her former husband Lloyd Davies and his wife.

[8] Hewett's work, even more than other playwrights, requires strong and sympathetic casting and direction, and this is particularly the case for The Man from Mukinupin.