It's a Last Tuesday Tuesday!

Pimp my play: Don's Party
The Last Tuesday Society
30 July 2103 ONLY
Malthouse theatre
malthousetheatre.com.au
Facebook page

Melbourne's Last Tuesday Society are everything that is wonderful and insane about independent theatre in our town.

It's weird, but this month, they are in a grown up theatre, at the Beckett at the Malthouse, for the next in their Pimp My Play series.

How do you pimp a play?

1. Take a play.
2. Divide up the scenes amongst the collaborating artists.
3. Put all the pieces back together in order.
4. Present theatrical equivalent of Frankenstein to horrified/delighted audience.

And the play is Don's Party.

Don's freaking Party! The play David Williamson wrote in 1971 when he wasn't boring. The play about an election night in 1969 where there was a tiny chance that Labor would win. The play with 70s decor and moustaches before they became retro chic. The play that became a film at a time where nuding up was compulsory and gender politics meant voting like your husband and getting back into the kitchen to put some kabana and Coon on a toothpick and poking it into half a pineapple.

Hosted by Richard Higgins and with performers including Bron Battern, Telia Nevile, Matt Kelly and glorious folk from from The Sister's Grimm, post, The Suitcase Royale and I'm trying to kiss you, it may be the best production of a David Williamson play ever.

And if I were David Williamson, I'd hire a private jet to ensure that I didn't miss it.

Buy your tickets HERE. I've bought mine. There may be some at the door, but is it worth the risk?

Do we really still care about David W?

Oh dear, Don Parties On and On and On has opened in Sydney and we have to start caring about David again. Gee, thanks super political writer  Annabel Crabb and lovely Ms TN Alison Croggon for responding.

Haven't we got better things to do? I saw some amazing shows this week and they're not getting a squillionth of the national media attention.

But then, if I'm to believe David Williamson, I'm one of "a handful of self appointed cognescenti" (dumbfucks in the more common vernacular) who want "to prevent the public from enjoying what they happen to enjoy now." 

David didn't like the Crikey.com review of his latest cash cow and told the reviewer so. And if any one needed a tall horse that week, it was a tough find, as many joined David on their own high equus.

When I first read the comments on Crikey, I thought it was a a satirical genius pretending to be a pompous, verbose playwright who was really hurting because a web reviewer didn't like his play. I was wrong as. It really was David. He even gave a formal reply (you have to be a Crickey subscriber to read it, but there is a free trial).

David, if you want to convert us who didn't break a rib at DPO, please get this voice onto the stage. If  Don and his mates chatted with such indignation and hurt, I would have been rolling off my seat and giving dirty looks to anyone who dared write a nasty pasty word about you.

We've been told, by you David, that we (anyone who didn't like DPO) are too dumb (or up our own self-important bums) to understand the satire.

Ok, so you're holding up the satirical mirror, but instead of the fluro-lit circus mirror that makes these folk look like pock-marked wobbly freaks, you've dimmed the lights and chosen one of those skinny mirrors that makes you look so good that you want to carry it around with you and insist that people only look at your reflection.

The silly old boomers Don and Kath still shag, still look pretty hot, have a brilliant house, luxury cars, an articulate grandchild who reads books and an adult son who still comes to them for advice. 

Why thank you David, yes we are lucky and would you care to join us for supper so that you can write us into your next play? We're opening the Rockford's Basket Press from the cellar and Richmond Hill cheese box will be at room temperature by 9.30.

Next thing you'll be writing about a 40-something red head who wears too much Laura Ashley (always from the half price rack), isn't keen on leaving the inner city, admits she votes Greens because it's the easiest option, gets most of her political knowledge from QandA (yes David, I saw you on it) and claims that she can tell the difference between an oaked chardonnay and an aged semillion in a blind tasting. 

Clearly the reviews didn't close the show and I suspect that anyone who chose to give DPO a miss based on my opinion, probably did so because we have similar thoughts about theatre and life (and they can taste varietal differences in plonk).

But for balance, please read what Alison, Richard and Martin thought.  Naturally, also read the ones David said were good. Here's the one from Variety and The Herald Sun is meant to be a rave, but all I could find was this one.

Of course, the above reviewers will be meeting in a secret spot later today to decide what we want to stop the public enjoying next week. I'm suggesting that cup cakes be banned from children's parties, cinema choc tops be filled with hot sand and post-sex cuddling be restricted to 60 seconds.


White people love David
DPO review
A much better boomer show on at the same time
Let the Sunshine review

Review: Court in the Act

Court in the Act

(The Case of the Crown v Someone in the Audience)

Rod Quantock, National Trust of Australia (Vic), the Old Melbourne Goal, Justice Experience

19 January 2011

The Old City Watch House

until 11 February

Melbourne's theaterati know that this week a Melbourne-born, 60-something famous boomer writer has been criticised by dumb arse reviewers for creating jaded and dull theatre. It isn't Rod Quantock. If David Williamson made me snooze, Captain Snooze himself woke me up and reminded me that writers do love and trust the intelligence of their audience, that satire should always make me cringe at my own prejudices and that polite twitters can never compare to uncontrollable belly laughs. 

If Rod's doing a show, I want to see it.  And I'm in a very long queue of people wanting to do the same.   

Court in the Act isn't written and as an audience you will be more than a passive bum on a seat. Your bum will start on a wooden bench in a prison cell with some strangers' bums. It could be a cell where Chopper sat or where Ronald Ryan wondered if anyone will even remember his name. If you were arrested in Melbourne before 1994, it may feel too familiar.

The City Watch House closed in 1994 and his been kept the same so that the public can explore. Quantock has done shows, including Coming Clean, in the Watch House and if you've been to one, no one's going to stop you trying to get locked in with him again.

Back in the cell, your cell mates choose a crime and a criminal. When you're let out, it's off to the exercise yard to vote for the best and the winning cases are tried in the Old Magistrates Court – the court where Ned Kelly was sentenced to death. On our night, there was at least one lawyer who had worked professionally in this room and he continued his work nobly defending Colin who stole a famous banana bread recipe. The next case involved insurance fraud, murder and removing sandbags from a flood levee. 

As Rod is only one person, the roles of defendant, defence lawyer, court artist, judge, clerk, jury and witnesses are all chosen from the audience. Eager ones can jump in early, others will be chosen by the eager ones and you don't dare throw away your entry raffle ticket.

If audience participation scares the bejesus out of you so much that you'd rather risk Don Parties On and On and On, know that Rod doesn't pick on anyone who can't cope and never leaves anyone stuck for words or embarrassed – unless they bring it on themselves.

I've never been to a Rod Quantock show and seen anyone look grumpy. I can't guarantee you'll love Court in the Act, but I'll think you're a bit odd if you don't. Book for yourself and all your friends. If it were my birthday, I'd make it my party outing and it could be the best date show ever, because you'll know if you share the same sense of humour and discover if they've ever been arrested or like wearing handcuffs.

This review appears on AussieThearte.com

Photos courtesy of court artist A Alexander's new iPhone.

Review: Don Parties On

Don Parties On

MTC 

13 January 2011

Playhouse, the Arts Centre

to 12 February 2011
www.mtc.com.au

David Williamson was my favourite playwright when I was 14 and I got an A+ for my Don's Party English essay. Suspecting that my teen taste may have been naive, I re-read the script and still recoiled with embarrassing recognition and nostalgia at the perfect snapshot of the generation who raised me. I love Don's Party. I'm not alone and 40-odd years later Williamson has given us Don Parties On.

I was a toddler when Don's Party was written; the same age as the offstage baby Richard. Discovering the play in 1980s Adelaide, I was far from 1970s Melbourne, but I knew Don and Kath and their guests. They were the young, university-educated middle-class generation who supported the left to rebel against their parents and felt entitled to their easy education and well-paid jobs. From their casual misogyny to the excitement of home made pizzas, this was the last generation we now call Baby Boomers and the generation whose free sex created gen X ... and in 2010 they still have friends over on election night.

Don (Garry McDonald) and Kath (Tracy Mann) are still together in their tastefully renovated house in Lower Plenty, Mal (Robert Grubb) and Jenny (Sue Jones) got divorced, Cooley (Frankie J Holden) is now a Liberal voter and married to newcomer Helen (Diane Craig), Mack is dead and there's name dropping of Evan, Kerry, Jody, Simon and Susan.

There are few surprises. They've all followed the path they were set on in 1969 and the biggest laughs came from Kath doing her PHD at Deakin (is anyone not tertiary educated in Melbourne weeing themselves?), the three men singing Creedence Clearwater Revival and the three women wanting to listen to Maxine McKew criticise the ALP when she lost her seat.

I still recognise these people, especially Jenny and her preaching to 42-year-old Richard and liberal Liberal Helen supporting Medicins Sans Frontiers and buying goats for Africa, but I don't believe them.  They have elements of people I know, but each is little more than a cliche.

But these are fictional people and "Don" tells his friends that his fictional accounts of them (he finally had a book published) were never meant to offend and that all writers borrow and exaggerate from life. If this is exaggeration, Williamson must know some very dull people. The 70s swinging stories didn't even make them interesting.

The perfectly chosen boomer cast all brought more to their characters than they were given, but the "young" ones were less successful. Playing a stereotype (even if it's written) gives an audience nothing to relate to. Instead of seeing ourselves and caring, we're left grateful that we are not like them.

Naturally I looked to Richard (Darren Gilshenan). He's 42 and thinks he's 30 (so do I), but behaves like a brat who needs his mummy to give him an overnight flu tablet to calm him down. The original offstage baby Richard was more authentic. He and his 30-year-old lover (Nikki Shiels) are poor caricatures of selfish people whose only purpose is to be laughed at. Which was ironic, as Jenny tells us how her generation feels such passion for their children.

Structurally the new party is a reflection of the old with enough exposition and self-references to excite my inner-14-year-old and make my 42-year-old self want to attack the script with a red pen. One chips and twisties joke was plenty and who cares about dentist Evan if he's not part of this story.

And as gen Y nightmare granddaughter Belle (Georgia Flood) screams, "Just because there's a vampire in the movie, doesn't make it a vampire movie", just because every ABC political celebrity and well known politician is mentioned doesn't make it a political play or a social reflection of our society.

The political satire was restricted to name dropping (including enough Nick Minchins to convince Nick Minchin that he's important) and comments about the faceless assigns of the ALP and the irrational fear of boat people. Combined with sound bites from the ABC's 2010 Election Night coverage, it felt like the kind of political lecture a new Australian should listen to in order to pass their are-you-bonza-enough-to-be-one-of-us test.

I just don't get it. I know we get more conservative and complacent in middle age, but we don't get dumber. I secretly hoped that Don Parties On would be David Williamson's finger to all of us who have scoffed at his post-Emerald City writing, but then I'm just a 42-year-old who recently asked her mum for a Panadeine Forte because she had a bad headache. And out of nostalgia, curiosity and a love of play written in the early 70s,  I would have gone to see it no matter what any review said.

Photo: Jeff Busby
This appears on AussieTheatre.com


The first review was this one on Crikey.
Arts Hub
Theatre Notes
The Age


Don's Party film trailer

Melbourne White People Like David Williamson

I might have to hand in my membership card of the leftie middle age, middle class, over educated, inner city club.

Whilst checking how many new cliches on Stuff White People Like I ticked off (106/134 on the full list), I had to be smug about #43: white people like plays. We really do. I'm so white I sat in front of John Safran* at the MTC last week. And I'm so white that I thought the political satire on display wasn't ironic (#50) enough. My friends agreed, as we wished the free beer was an organic microbrew (#23).

Like the rest of pale play-loving Melbourne, I'm gearing up for the premiere of David Williamson's Don Parties On this week, so went to my bookcase to retrieve my copy of Don's Party.

I can't find it.

This is like not finding a little plastic sushi (#42) soy sauce fish in a Melbourne white person's recycle bin (#64).

I must have a Don's Party. In my collected-in-the-80s bookcase there are other Williamsons, some Buzos and the Lawler trilogy.  Of course there's also a slab of Albees, books by Martin Esslin and David Hare's autobiography (a later addition). Moving away from the drama shelf there's Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance alongside Tom Robbins, Hunter S Thomson, Thomas Pynchon and Jeanette Winterson. (The Pynchons remain unread.) And books about Marxism, Bhuddism and Post Modernism.

It's just not possible that this did-a-BA-in-the-80s bookshelf does not have a red and white Currency Press copy of the seminal play written about Australian middle-class politics.

If I don't read it before the opening night of Don Parties On, how can I empathise with the dismay of the ageing jaded lefties or laugh at Williamson referencing Williamson or be at all disappointed and offended (#101) by his new work by comparing it to his early brilliance?

Perhaps I accidentally put it in the bookshelf devoted to writing (#21) and grammar (#99) books...

#101 Being Offended

*If you missed Christian Lander, the creator of SWPL, talking to John Safran at the Wheeler Centre, click here.

PS. Problem solved by the St Kilda library. I also borrowed a Michel Gondry (#68) film that I hadn't seen and bought some organic, fair-trade coffee (#1).

Marion Potts Lecture and MTC 2011

How can it already be time to think about 2011?

If you're thinking about what theatre subscriptions to give as the big December present, MTC 2011 is now open and Malthouse is teasing us with their new Artistic Director. 

Marion Potts is the new 2011 Artistic Director of Malthouse Theatre and presented the 2010 Rex Crompton Memorial Lecture last week. Don't worry if, like me, you missed it because Malthouse have given us the pdf of her speech. I'm excited.

The MTC also recently announced their 2011 season, Simon Phillips' twelfth and last season with the company. 

Of course, it'll be a hoot and a half to see Geoffrey Rush as Lady Bracknell and Ewen Leslie as Hamlet, and it's wonderful to see new works by Melbourne writers (and darlings of the independent scene)  Robert Reid and Lally Katz; especially as both are directed by Aiden Fennessy, which makes me smile.

But nothing has made me as excited and terrified as Don Parties On. Oh yes, David Williamson has written a sequel to Don's Party. Garry Macdonald is in it and Robyn Nevin is directing. If it's as brilliant as the original, I'll take back everything I've said about Williamson's recent works. If it's the biggest car crash to ever hit an Australian stage...well I won't be the only vitriolic blogger.

Review: Let the Sunshine

Let the Sunshine
Melbourne Theatre Company
31 July 2010
Playhouse, the Arts Centre
to 4 September
www.mtc.com.au

Let the Sunshine opens with a scruffy, but still attractive, 50-something trying to put an IKEA-like book shelf together. The audience are instantly his. We all know how hard it is to put those shelves in place. When his still-looking-good-but-not-denying-her-age wife comes in and jokes about his Richard Dawkins book and that he buys books that he never reads...well let's just all go home and make sure we have a spot in our Billy bookcases for unread plays by Australian playwrights and famous atheists.

I watched Dawkins on QandA (that's the same as reading isn't it?) and I have a shelf full of plays in my IKEA bookcase (that I assembled all by myself!); I've even read some of them. Ones I read in the 80s, like Don's Party, The Club and The Removalists, still inspire me. David Williamson is one of the reasons I learnt to love theatre. With astute observation and wit, he gave Australian theatre a voice that... Yeah, yeah we all know that Williamson is a national treasure and that his plays are as popular today as they ever were and ensure good box office.

Why? I don't know.

Let the Sunshine (co-produced by the Melbourne and Queensland theatre companies) is the theatrical equivalent of the great Gillard/Abbot political debate on the telly.

Academy Award– nominated documentary maker Toby (Robert Coleby) and his successful lefty-book publisher wife Ros (Jackie Weaver) have moved to Noosa. They are 'friends' with fat (sorry John), racist, homophobic, obscenely wealthy property developer Ron (John Wood) and his wife Natasha (Andrea Moor), who ran a successful fashion boutique for three years until she got bored.  Toby and Ron don't get along! And if that isn't enough, their Sydney-living, 30-something offspring come to visit. Emma (Rachel Gordon) is nearly a partner in her law firm (daddy Ron is impressed) but she finds it difficult to be a woman in such a tough environment. Rick (Paul Ashcroft) is a musician but works in a bar because the world hasn't noticed his talent (Toby and Ros think he's a genius).  Emma and Rick don't get along either...or do they?

Astute play-goers will recognise the subtle satire about the left and right politics in Australia. They may even understand the joke about Ron and Natasha's John Olsen painting and the follow up Jeffrey Smart joke in Act 2 (when everyone goes back to pretentious old Sydney).  Olsen's paintings are wild and organic – like Noosa – and Smart's are all clean and ordered – like Sydney. But everyone who goes to the theatre knows that. These are people who read Crikey and New Matilda (just like Toby) and nudge each other with recognition when silly old Natasha tells Ros that the book club doesn't want to read Geraldine Brooks. I mean who would even go to a book club that doesn't love our Geraldine? And then there's the jibes about Maggie Thatcher editing The Australian and a good lefty can't get through the day without bagging Janet Albrechtsen.

Or there are plenty of jokes about "horrible right wing journalist thugs" and "nanny-state lefties" for people who have trouble putting part A into slot B and don't know the difference between a flat- and a  phillips- head screwdriver.

Tell your own story is wonderful advice to any writer – but David, please stop telling us your story. If you don't want to live with the disillusioned ex-hippies and soul-less developers on the Sunshine Coast and you hate Sydney so much, move back to Melbourne. We'll have a bowl of pasta at Ti Amo and head across to La Mama, then you can come over the river to see a Red Stitch show. Probably best that you avoid some of the inner-city suburbs because the developers are destroying them and you'll have to wear thermals if you want to go down the coast... Adelaide maybe? They love you there. Or Perth? It's warm and surely those miners are crying out for a bit of well-crafted wit.

But come on Anne-Marie – it's satire! That thing that makes fun of extremists and the middle class.  David is laughing at these people. Perhaps if you read more plays and less Geraldine Brooks, you'd understand.

David may be laughing at, but the audience are laughing with him. The jokes about a monkey in a turban (an Indian cricketer) and "at least it was a bloke" (Emma shagging no-hoper Rick is better than her nuding-up with a woman) get more laughs than the Al Gore joke. These throw away giggles could be removed from the script and make no impact on the story. So why are they there?

This is writing that supports and boosts the status quo. If old Ron is really a good guy at heart, surely there's nothing wrong with a harmless joke about hating Indians and him not wanting his daughter to go carpet munching?

This is the attitude that gives us an election campaign where the left and the right are fighting so hard for the bland middle ground that the debate between our 'leaders' was telecast at 6.30 because they knew it didn't stand a chance against the Masterchef final. And the theatre crowd prefer Masterchef because they laughed at the Tetsuya joke more than the sub-prime one.

And, it was directed by Michael Gow,  the man who wrote Away.

This review appeared on AussieTheartre.com.