Don's Party by David Williamson to be presented by the Bruce Hall Players, ANU Arts Centre, August 22-23 at 8 pm and August 24, 1996 at 2 pm.
DON: Mal: I'd like you to have Kath for the night.
MAL: Don: I'd like you to have Jenny for the night.
In the meantime, of course, Cooley has coolly "had" most of the women at Don's Party in 1969. How could this happen, and how could Cooley still be the most loved character from this classic David Williamson play now the numbers have turned into 1996? What could inspire today's students to want to re-create the kind of engineering students' parties of Williamson's university days - when the men's immediate sexual gratification seemed to be their only concern, to the ultimate exclusion of really important matters like who's winning the Federal Election.
I found some answers when I met, courtesy of Coralie Wood Publicity, not only the producers, director and actors from the Bruce Hall Players but also Coralie's little secret: in this very city, urbane and sophisticated, partner in a well known legal firm, is the very model of the original Cooley - the name slightly re-worked from Crowley.
Peter Crowley (even looking a little like John Ewart with whom I identify the role of Cooley from the 1972 NIDA/Jane Street production) is not just a barrister admitted to the Supreme Courts of the ACT, Victoria and NSW and to the High Court of Australia, not just a leading figure in the ACT Law Society and sometime lecturer at the ANU Legal Workshop, but a man of genuine social concern in his work for Open Family Australia and the Multiple Sclerosis Society. He chairs the local section of the National Gallery Foundation, and admits to a strong and continuing friendship with David Williamson, not despite the creation of Cooley, but indeed because of it.
In a three-way conversation between the students, Crowley and a telephone, on the other end of which was David Williamson, the timelessness of the characters in Don's Party became the theme. Director Richard Baxter sees the play as a "photograph" of its time, Crowley backing this view by explaining how Williamson does not present a viewpoint but leaves the audience to make their own judgements. Williamson recalled how, after a showing of the film to a Marxist Feminist audience in Denmark, women spoke to him, privately, saying that though Cooley was terrible he was also attractive. This was characterised by Williamson as a tension between their "heads" and their "hormones".
I wondered, though, whether "openness", "honesty" and "directness", which seemed to attract the men in this discussion, were not simply charming cover-ups for Cooley's chauvinism.
One scene begins with Kerry telling Cooley "You would be one of the coarsest, most sex-obsessed persons I've ever met" and ends with
KERRY: Usually it's [going to bed with someone] an organic part of the whole relationship.
(Cooley ushers her towards the bedroom)
COOLEY: Organ first, relationship later.
KERRY: (as she is going) That's a very interesting philosophical proposition.
But Kate Barraclough, student producer, sees Cooley as everyone's mate. The old Australian mateship, originally exclusively a male to male relationship, has expanded, by 1996, to include all. Now it is common to meet female Cooleys. Indeed Williamson's character represents the change beginning in the sixties towards gender inclusivity. Mateship for all is now the reality. Peter Crowley told how parents are now mates with their adult children, while this was hardly possible in his parents' time. Kate thought that young people are less promiscuous now than 30 years ago, not because they know more about the risks but because it's now possible for people to be just mates. Men can now relate to women person to person on many levels apart from sexual power play. Women can be Cooleys if they want to.
It's funny, but Federal Elections didn't get a mention. Maybe it's plays and playwrights like David Williamson that are the vehicles for real change in society, while politicians belong in the back seat.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
No comments:
Post a Comment