2002: Soulmates by David Williamson

Soulmates by David Williamson.  Sydney Theatre Company directed by Gale Edwards at The Playhouse September 4-14.

    I don't know about you, but I go to the theatre for two reasons. 

    I want to appreciate the theatrical artistry of actors, designers and directors.  As we should expect of STC, I was certainly not disappointed by this production.  I loved Amanda Muggleton as the steamy novelist Katie Best, and it was a thrill to see Jacki Weaver's nicely presented changes of mood in a role which some may find a surprise.  The post-modern silver set was right for this play (though I wasn't sure of the relevance of all of the paintings projected behind), while the direction moved the play along at the pace it deserves.

    Then I want to be "transported", taken into some level of experience beyond my own imagining.  No matter how professional the actors are, the writer must give them the material to work on.  Williamson, despite much good writing in recent plays, has made fun of his own craft of writing in Soulmates but without making me laugh except at fairly superficial cleverness. 

    You may think, when you see the play, that my criticism is mere sour grapes, since Danny - played by William Zappa as very Melbourne - is an academic critic seeking always the best of high art and dismissing the commercial entertainment of Katie Best's novels.  He refuses to accept the post-modern belief that all that is written is culturally equal and his ideals about art are floored in Act 2, yet Williamson seems to me to be just playing games with the issues for the sake of the laughs.  The laughs bring in the bums (and various other parts of the anatomy) on seats, but I found quite a few first night audience members feeling cheated at interval and only a little more satisfied at the end.

    So I found myself searching for what was wrong.  Act 1, on reflection, was really only a teaser.  There were some unsavoury jokes about September 11 which never led anywhere.  Yabby coulis got several laughs completely without connection to the rest of the play.  It was only in Act 2 that the characters were given some sense of having real relationships that we might identify with.  I suppose the last line about the pragmatic, perhaps cynical approach of writers' using people they know as material - "That's what writers do!" - might have been meant to be satirical.  I thought it left Williamson trapped in his own post-modern mire.

    But then, I'm just the critic.  You'd better go and decide for yourself.

© Frank McKone, Canberra