Daddy Was Asleep

Daddy Was Asleep is a 1945 Australian radio play by Betty Roland. She felt it was her best play since The Touch of Silk.

The play aired on ABC radio and it was well received. It played again in 1947, 1950 and 1952.

Leslie Rees claimed that the play was "in a special class" out of all Roland's radio plays, adding, "It is a sympathetic and sometimes very painful study of human frailty, touching tragedy. Hiliary West, a would-be great writer, edits a small paper in a declining Australian mining town. His tender relationship with his little daughter Moira is one of the few lovely things in his life—and it is the subject of some of Miss Roland’s most delicate writing. A kindly doctor gradually exposes Hiliary’s neurosis, but meantime Hiliary has antagonized a bunch of shanty-town roughs, who wreak their revenge on the little girl. Hiliary West is a human and credible study of a literary frustrate, a blood brother to Chekhov's Trigorin."

Premise
According to one account "his psychological drama is set in a country town where Hillary West, who had hoped to become a great writer, settles down as editor of a local newspaper. The gradual development of Hillary's neurosis and his domestic relations with his wife, and little daughter build up a drama of strong human interest."