Kate’s Score: 4 birthday balloons
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The name David Williamson is woven through the history of Australian theatre and film. Defiantly Australian, his work has wryly embraced the language and character and zeitgeist of the white middle-class; and popular with the class he surgically examines with sharp wit, his work has often been blasted by critics as being too popularist – as though it is the duty of playwrights to be obscure and difficult and not at all accessible to their audience.
Fifty years on from the emergence of New Wave theatre, Williamson gives us Family Values. And his audiences still love him. The premise is simple: the family of retired federal judge Roger Collins (Andrew McFarlane) and his acerbic wife Sue (Belinda Giblin) come together to celebrate his 70th birthday. Like most family get togethers on birthdays and Christmas, it quickly becomes a battlefield as political, social and religious beliefs are declaimed and argued in a vain attempt to win hearts and minds.
My companion shuddered and in a quiet aside noted that this was every family gathering for her.
And it is this that Williamson has captured. The zeitgeist of the now. Not so long ago, at family gatherings, Australians swallowed their different viewpoints to keep the family peace. Now, the mix of left / right / middle / atheist / born-again / racist / sexist viewpoints are fired at each other. No longer is there debate; just positions of smug self-righteousness screamed across dining tables and down mobile phones, unyielding and uncompromising. At one point I felt assaulted by all the characters continually roaring at each other and longed for some moments of truce; then realised that this is exactly how it is in these situations and director Lee Lewis has placed us as hapless bystanders caught in the crossfire of family civil war. How can we survive, let alone reconcile and work through, all this anger and despair?
By making the problem real, human and immediate. Williamson places the character of Saba (Sabryna Walters), a fleeing refugee from Nauru, right in the judge’s dining room. Her monologue is one of the highlights of the play and stands on its own; making the cause no longer theoretical and remote. It has a face and demands to be compassionately dealt with. The self-serving nature of first world problems and ideology have the glaring interrogative light of reality shone upon them. And in this glaring light, compromises are made, a little hope is born. Although it is the white middle-class man who gets the credit, this may be the weapon we have to use. Pragmatically. Sadly. For a while, at least. Until we find a better way.
The Collins children are dangerously close to stereotypes. Jamie Oxenbould as Michael and Ella Prince as Emily both make character choices which attempt to shift those types a little whilst Danielle King’s Lisa and Bishanyia Vincent’s Noelene (Emily’s partner) leaven their characters with humour. These are intelligent choices, for without them the characters would be nondescript against the work of McFarlane and Giblin whose nuanced timing and comic sensibilities prevent the play from sliding into a diatribe.
Williamson’s passion for compassion is the strength of this play. His is a call-to-arms to find a space in all our self-righteousness to start working together with kindness and respect to solve the many crises which confront us.
Kate Stratford -On the Town
Photo Credit: Brett Boardman
17 Jan – 7 Mar 2020
Venue: SBW Stables: Griffin Theatre
Theatre Company: Griffin Theatre
Duration: N/A
Ticket Prices:
Full: $62
Senior, Preview, Groups 8+: $52
Concession: $46
Under 35: $38
Monday Rush: $20
Preview 17 – 21 January
Opening Nights 22 & 23 January
Season 24 January – 7 March
Performance Times
Monday – Friday 7pm
Saturday 2pm & 7pm
Meet the Artists
Tuesday 4 February
Captioned Performance
Tuesday 3 March
By David Williamson
These details have been published at the announcement of the 2020 Season. Some details may change. Subscriptions only available initially,. Individual ticket go on sale closer to the event.
A celebrated federal judge.
His son, a born-again Christian.
His daughter, a Border Force officer.
Her partner, the captain of a Border Force ship.
His other daughter, a left-wing activist.
His wife, who has worked all her life to keep the family together.
Saba, an asylum seeker on the run from Nauru.
On the eve of his birthday, is it too much to expect his wife and three children celebrate with him?
For 50 years, David Williamson has shown us the best and worst of ourselves. A blackly comic drama situated squarely on the fault lines that divide Australia, Family Values is David at his angry best: furious that his generation has retired from defending the socially compassionate values on which they claim to have built this country. The play asks us to choose freedom over reputation, empathy over franking credits; to abandon a deeply flawed system for the sake of humanity.
David’s belief that comedy can reveal our harshest truths is undimmed, and his hope that theatre can change hearts and minds remains an inspiration to the whole industry.
As the Stables turns 50, it is only fitting that our most successful playwright returns to where he began.
Director Lee Lewis
Dramaturg Van Badham
Set & Costume Designer Sophie Fletcher
Lighting Designer Benjamin Brockman
Composer & Sound Designer Steve Francis
Stage Manager Khym Scott
