[1] The play is set at a house in Bondi Beach belonging to the Donnellys, an upwardly mobile family who are bookmakers at Randwick Racecourse.

Joe has spent a great deal of money from the business in order to impress Kate, in part because he is failing to satify her sexually.

[3] Leslie Rees, in his history of Australian theatre, praised the "provocatively stimulating and well-written scenes of human stress within a carefully observed world of people for whom horses are a profession and a living."

He also thought Vernon ""caught the exact tone of talk and manners of this crudely ebullient Australian family—crude in the sense of having pitiably little inwardness or self-understanding or gift of the tactful touch, while living, at their best, according to a domestic code dictated by conscience rather than by reason.

The Sydney Morning Herald called the play "much too slight a piece to keep the critical thunderstorms off... but sections of Saturday's first night audience certainly enjoyed its glossy magazine superficialities.