From Warbucks to Williamson in Sydney

But the latter also had something else: a line-up of Australian musical theatre royalty in the casting, including Anthony Warlow as Daddy Warbucks, Nancye Hayes as Miss Hannigan and Todd McKenney as Rooster. Warlow is best known as Australia’s original Phantom, and McKenny originated the role of Peter Allen in the original production of The Boy From Oz, long before Hugh Jackman took a revised version to Broadway.

It was splendid to see them all on the same stage, and proves once again the strength in numbers of Aussie musical talent which has also stretched from Hugh Jackman to three-time Olivier winner Philip Quast in the West End. (Quast is now based in Australia again, after living in London for over twenty years, and by coincidence my partner and I had a long lunch at his Sydney home before we went to see Annie; the next day he left for Melbourne, to begin rehearsals to lead the company of the Australian premiere of Yes Prime Minister, opening in Melbourne at the end of January).

I’ve been mostly going cold turkey on theatre these last four weeks or so, while travelling around Australia; I’ve let nature put on the show instead, at places like Kangaroo Island, the Great Barrier Reef and Uluru (Ayers Rock), or the pyrotechnicians in the case of the spectacular New Year’s Eve fireworks over Sydney Harbour.

But amidst the natural wonders, I was also hoping for some theatrical fireworks from arguably Australia’s most prominent (and unarguably most prolific) playwright David Williamson, who may not be quite in the league of our own Alan Ayckbourn but has spent the last 41 years or so turning out nearly 40 plays, as he became a one-time fixture at both Sydney Theatre Company and Melbourne Theatre Company. (His fame is confirmed by the fact that at Circular Quay — the passenger ferry port beside Sydney Opera House — there’s a Writers’ Walk plaque dedicated to him embedded in the pavement, much in the way of the Hollywood Walk of Fame stars).

Nowadays, his most frequent producer is the Ensemble Theatre Company, located on the other side of the Harbour Bridge at Millson’s Point, in a cozy three-sided auditorium that has an excellent restaurant below it looking out over the harbour, as if it is sited on a floating barge. The meal we had before his latest play Nothing Personal was wonderful and full of flavour; I wish I could say the same thing about the play that followed, which pushed buttons about the state of the publishing industry and workplace rivalries, but was very much like a theatrical version of an airport novel potboiler with its twists and melodramatic turns.

Interestingly, the critical tide has turned against Williamson’s work in the last few years, and in a fascinating blog responding to the reception afforded to the playwright’s Don Parties On, a sequel to his own early breakout play Don’s Party, seen last year, critic Alison Croggon noted, “Yes, Williamson is a successful commercial writer, in Australia at least, and that deserves its own respect. My argument has always been with those, including Williamson, who imply that this success equates to the achievements of a Chekhov or a Shakespeare. I don’t have the space to address the absurdity of those claims, but they wildly misrepresent the artists hauled in as Williamson’s peers. Why are they being made in the first place? There is any number of popular writers, from Dan Brown to Stephanie Meyer, who enjoy their fans and their royalties without feeling the need to make larger claims for themselves. So why is it such a sin to point out that commercial success is not a synonym for artistic accomplishment? And when did Williamson turn into a sacred cow?”

Yet, when another critic pointed out some of the play’s deficiencies, one political commentator Annabel Crabb, Croggon goes on, “decided to give the issue her two cents. Blithely admitting that she hadn’t seen Don Parties On and that, as she isn’t a theatre writer, she isn’t familiar with what has actually been said about Williamson’s work, she then goes on claim that ‘implacable hatred of [David Williamson] seems of late to have become an article of faith for the serious theatre goer’. Her evidence? One review - the Crikey rant - and a drive-by snipe in a non-arts column in The Australian. From this, Crabb adduces an ‘orthodoxy’ among Australian theatre critics, amongst whom Williamson’s work is ‘fashionably pilloried’. The reason given for this ‘implacable hatred’ is Williamson’s commercial success, aka the ‘tall poppy’ syndrome.”

Ignorance, of course, is bliss; and as Croggon more thoughtfully notes, “Crabb is, of course, entitled to her opinion, even if it’s about critiques she confesses she hasn’t read which discuss a play she hasn’t seen. What is it about the arts? It’s the one area of public life in which ignorance is considered a badge of authority and expertise is a drawback. It wouldn’t happen with football.”

Myself, I loved the comment from Tomas Boot, who noted on his blog (though I wouldn’t go quite so far as him in criticising his work, it’s an interesting perspective): “I revel in the utter tedium of David Williamson’s plays, as they provide a mind-numbing reminder of just how great the great theatre in Sydney is - nothing makes a beautiful woman more enchanting than placing an ugly one beside her, after all. As such, this critic finds him and his work an absolutely vital part of the Australian theatrical landscape, being as it is not so much the base line of quality (independent productions often descending far lower) but more a nightmarish presence, an obese oeuvre that by its own repulsion spurs others more speedily onwards. Mr. Williamson should be commended for his service to the arts, as his self-sacrifice - whereby he continuously churns out examples of exactly what theatre shouldn’t be - is truly noble. One wishes that he never retires, and that he maintains his current playwriting capacity (three plays in Sydney this year) or even increases it. The play under review, for instance, is only the second work of his in this year’s season at the Ensemble Theatre, which is surely a sign that Australia’s most popular playwright is being woefully underrepresented, one thinks.”

On Friday, I’ll be filing a final report from Australia on this week’s opening in Sydney of the revamped production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Love Never Dies and Julie Taymor’s production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, originally staged for New York’s Metropolitan Opera, that she has recreated for Opera Australia and I’m seeing tonight at Sydney Opera House.