| Cornerstone | |
| Director: | Doris Fitton |
| Premiere: | 19 April 1956 |
| Place: | Independent Theatre, Sydney |
| Orig Lang: | English |
| Subject: | marriage |
| Genre: | drama |
Cornerstone is a 1956 Australian play by Gwen Meredith.
It was highly commended in a 1955 competition from the Playwrights' Advisory Board (the one won by The Torrents and Summer of the Seventeenth Doll).
The play was produced at Sydney's Independent Theatre in a production sponsored by the Elizabethan Theatre Trust. It was then produced in Brisbane. This was rare for an Australian play in the 1950s.
The Bulletin called it "an efficient, almost photographic account of the everyday tragedy of the daughter who has sacrificed her chances of marriage in order to look after her mother... The characters are recognisable types, the dialogue fluent, and all the surface-values of the situation are presented in a simple and straightforward manner, so that the final impression is that of a sad story ably told."
The play was adapted for radio in 1956.
Catherine, a single woman in her forties, looks after her widowed mother. Her ex-boyfriend Bryce comes back into her life, a widower, and he proposes. Catherine accepts but the rest of her family refuses to take their mother. Bryce must leave for overseas without her.