Snot, Vomit, Men and Money: Packer & Sons Opens at Belvoir
Christina’s Score: 4 /5 stars
In an era where toxic masculinity is being defined and discussed, Packers & Sons by playwright Tommy Murphy, may stand as proof of its existence and its elevation. Directed by Eamon Flack, Packers and Sons at Belvoir Street Theatre is an unpretentious piece about men, masculinity, patriarchy, nepotism and every other thing that arouses the old white and powerful—should their hearts be undamaged by stress, alcohol abuse and over-eating.
Packer & Sons tells a story of one of Australia’s most well-known media families. The first act focuses on Kerry Packer (Josh McConville), as its central protagonist, the narrative reveals the complex relationships between young Kerry, his father Frank (John Howard), and his brother Clyde (Brandon McClelland). As Frank plans to dominate the television market in Australia in addition to print with his beloved Telegraph newspaper, both Clyde and the often drunk Kerry, jostle for position and the approval of their father. The second act centres on Kerry (Now played by John Howard) and his son James (Josh McConville) who is struggling to find his own sense of self and purpose through the Packer’s and Murdoch’s forays into the telecommunications sector with the ill-fated Onetel.
Changing and exchanging characters the tag team of McConville (James Packer and Young Kerry Packer) and Howard (Older Kerry Packer and Frank Packer) carryout a convincing generational shapeshifting, some conducted on stage, to which the audience are fully consented, willing participant.
John Howard was a natural choice for Frank Packer and the older Kerry. His overbearing stature and unapologetic ruddy-arrogance gave dominion to both characters, and his delivery of dry, undercutting insults to his onstage sons hit a note that was authentically brutal and seldom tender. Josh McConville as the younger Kerry and James Packer was convincingly pathetic and deflated. McConville’s nuanced performance balanced the messiness of both characters with their conniving, salting them with an emotion that was piteous and self-indulgent. Brandon McClelland as Clyde Packer was clean believable as a man that was convinced of his own goodness.
Direction by Eamon Flack must be commended as Packer & Sons is a complex interweaving of narratives that requires onstage deftness and off-stage precision. The creative team of Flack, Romanie Harper (set and costume design), Nick Schlieper (lighting designer), Alan John (composer), Steve Francis and David Bergman (sound designers), should be congratulated on designing a space that was not contrived but was as fitted to the episteme as the wood panelling on my grandparents kitchen wall.
Much of the climatic heights of this play as well as comic intensity owes itself to its embracing of the physicality of both the time and of male relationships, as artfully choreographed by fight and movement director Nigel Poulton. Both Poulton and Flack should be celebrated for giving a platform to the physicality that is so much part of Australian masculinity as a feature exploring both its violent and sexual duality.
In the playwright’s note, Tommy Murphy says that “James Packer believes you want to be him,” quoting James Packer as saying that most people want to swap places with him. This play sits as an antithesis to the younger Packer’s assertion. Ironically Murphy achieves this by placing the audience directly inside the narcissistic world of the Packer’s that overtly sells itself as privileged, but is revealed as ultimately classless.
Heavily aware of my own feminine need for intimacy, the play left me feeling bland and unsatisfied, as though Packer & Sons had denied me ,the viewer, the emotional payoff that so often going to the theatre gives me. Therein lies the success of this piece and faithfulness of the writer, performers and creative team to the subject. Rejecting the sensationalism of intimacy, Murphy denies the audience the same emotion denied the characters within the play. Walking a delicate line of gifting his characters a subtle humanity, Murphy imbues Packer & Sons with all shallowness and greed of character that a life of narcissistic nepotism can furnish. Leaving the audience to sit with the reality of our physical, political and media landscapes being shaped by a spoilt little boy’s wants and our governments acquiescence with them.
Christina Donoghue – Theatre Now
Packer and Sons
Tommy Murphy
16 Nov – 22 Dec 2019
Tuesday 6.30pm
Wednesday 6.30pm
Thursday 1pm & 7.30pm
Friday 7.30pm
Saturday 2pm & 7.30pm
Sunday 5pm
Previews
7.30pm, 16 November
6.30pm, 17 November
7.30pm, 19 November
Opening Night (invitation only)
7.30pm, 20 November
Post-show Q&A
26 November, directly following the performance
Thursday Matinee
1pm, 28 November
1pm, 12 & 19 December
Unwaged Performance
1pm, 5 December
Belvoir Briefing
6,30pm, 7 November
Venue: Belvoir Theatre: Upstairs
Theatre Company: Belvoir Theatre Company
Duration: N/A
A battler at a Tasmanian racecourse finds ten shillings in the dirt. He puts it on a 12-1 long shot, and when it romps home he’s off to the mainland, and the Packer Dynasty is born. Fathers and sons across generations, through war, the Depression, technological change. The family myth grows with the influence, and each son feels the weight of time, of power. But now it’s the 21st century. Newspapers, magazines, broadcast TV – what are they? Now it’s time for entertainment through your phone. And back to laying bets on long shots.
A deeply researched, muscular work from Tommy Murphy (Mark Colvin’s Kidney, Holding the Man), Packer & Sons puts on stage the men who have loomed large over Sydney for nearly 100 years.
Plotted around the transitions of power from father to son over four generations, this is a play about power and what it does to the men who wield it.
Tommy writes real life like nobody else – complex dramatic portraits, a pitchperfect sense of the public interest in the private life. In other words, no one is better suited to write about the Packer line. This is about power in Sydney, and it’s about the age-old matter of what is passed on from fathers to sons. Robust and brilliant.
CAST
John Gaden
John Howard
Brandon McClelland
Josh McConville
Stage Manager Luke McGettigan
Assistant Stage Manager Jen Parsonage
Director Eamon Flack
Ticket Prices
Single tickets will go on sale to the general public on 3 June 2019.
