Heretic by David Williamson. Sydney Theatre Company at the Canberra Theatre Centre, Wednesday June 12. Directed by Wayne Harrison. Designer: John Fenczuk. Cast includes Robin Ramsay, Paul Goddard, Elizabeth Alexander, Peter Carroll, Jane Harders with Henri Szeps. Season: Wednesday June 12 - Saturday June 15, 1996.
We Canberrans may come to regret Heretic. We took the jokes about Canberra not merely in good part, but as a celebration of our existence. Even if Deakin was dull in the liberated 60's, at last we of the city-without-a-heart could recognise our suburban selves on stage - in a play which has national and indeed international resonances. This play places Canberra on the map of our imaginations just as The Golden Age by Louis Nowra put Tasmania there. But where Nowra gave us a new empathy for Tasmania, Williamson may have unwittingly been complicit in encouraging Canberra-bashing among audiences in other places who may laugh at the jokes differently.
This apparently trivial matter has parallels in the play, where the ultimate issue is the nature of truth. Derek Freeman, by arguing that genetics play an important part (but not the whole) in human behaviour, finds himself accused of racism - the opposite of his intention. Margaret Mead defends herself against Freeman's accusation that she did not tell the truth, only to discover (in the play after her death!) that Freeman never believed that she deliberately told lies. Monica Freeman discovers that Derek really does love her only when she is apparently at death's door, but must say "I wouldn't quite have put it that way" when Derek, trying to make a loving joke, says "Do you mean that you only know I love you when you are apparently at death's door?"
Monica, in determining to choose her own life, is to me the most interesting character in the play: where Derek and Margaret play out their hierarchical socially competitive roles, it is Monica who breaks her bounds and makes a real choice.
This is strong dramatic meat, but to bring it all together Williamson has made a paradigm shift from the narrative form to fantasy. The play is therefore represented as Derek's dream - but there is a weakness here. Williamson, having Derek actually fall sleep before our eyes and wake up at the end, is not willing to let the narrative completely go. The problem is that everything that Williamson wants to say about history from the 1920's to the 1980's can't realistically all be in Derek's dream. So the better trick is to create an illusion of a dream-state from start to finish. It's a risk, but oddly enough this will allow us, the audience, to take the issues on board for real: this is the contrary nature of the illusion of theatre. In this play I think this happens only in our feelings for Monica, who seems to step out of Derek's dream.
I sense that because Williamson is not completely in control of his new-found medium, Wayne Harrison has tried to make it work for him, creating what the real Derek Freeman at a reception after opening night called "a post-post-modern intellectual cabaret". Some of the devices work very well - Margaret Mead incarnated as Marilyn Monroe singing and dancing with an Aquarius crowd is both funny and makes a point about her sexuality. "Beam me up, Scotty", however, belongs to somebody else's fantasy, not this one.
I'm left, then, with mixed feelings. The performances were excellent, of course, as one would expect from such a cast. The design is stage-wise and very clever visually. Costumes are often startling and complement much humorous stage business in the acting. The result is a show which everyone in the audience enjoyed: people's faces were literally quite radiant as they clapped along with the encore reprise, warmly celebrating the skills of the actors. Yet perhaps we were applauding the director's skills in creating exciting theatre more than the writer's wit and sensibility. Williamson's work is not at heart light-weight - there's a sense for me that a sort of modern George Bernard Shaw is in the offing: but the best recipe for mixing comedy with intellectual rigour is still a few whirrs of the processor away.
© Frank McKone
Canberra, Australia
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