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Featured Favourites - Best loved plays from well known Australians
Marieke Hardy
writer, broadcaster, tv producer
My favourite Australian play is Don's Party. Witty, wicked, and responsible for the hugely iconic Aussie greeting 'g'day, cuntfeatures!'. I like everything about it.
Eddie Perfect
actor, comedian, musician
Since my memory works to erase the emotional impact of any piece of theatre after about 3 years, I’d love to say my favourite is a classic Australian Play... And I must say I’ve always been fond of Williamson’s The Club and The Removalists... Or even a bit of Patrick White’s Ham Funeral... But hell, they were ages ago... And the last time a play really rocked my world was Belvoir Street Theatre’s production of “Toy Symphony” by Michael Gow. It’s a startling beautiful piece about a playwrite with writer’s block who reconnects with his past in order to move forward. The sincerity and beauty of the writing along with the biographical nature of the narrative (it was Gow’s first play in a decade) really blew my socks right off. Having Neil Armfield direct Richard Roxburgh, Russel Dykstra, Justine Clarke, Guy Edmonds and Monica Maughan is never going to hurt, either. Really one of the highlights of my theatre going life. No shit.
Phillip Adams
writer, broadcaster, film makerAs a teenage drama critic (for The Bulletin) I saw a lot of Australian plays during the golden age of local drama. After decades of drought, the late sixties and early seventies saw a score of local plays – forcing Australian actors to learn the accent.
Many an Australian actor had lived and died without ever playing an Australian. They could ‘do” an accent for Noel Coward, Arthur Miller or Tennessee Williams – for generations they’d been vocal chameleons. But unless they’d had a role in Blue Hills (in which the entire cast sounded like refugees from English rep) Australian dialogue, colloquialisms and sundry idioms had never passed their lips. The few ‘Australian’ films of the era imported the likes of Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr to attempt to give voice to our vernacular.
Within a few years of Barry Humphries’ first stage reviews everything was different. I greatly admired Alan Seymour’s One Day of the Year – which also owed a debt to Arthur Miller. And, of course, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll was a well-deserved success. While awed by his novels, I found Patrick White’s plays ponderous but noted how closely White’s ‘Cheery Soul’ resembled Humphries’ Mrs. Everage.
Of course Barry influenced more playwrights than Patrick – even though they didn’t like this suggestion being aired in reviews. Williamson, Romeril and Hibberd needed, I believe, the trampoline of Humphries’. They were uninhibited by Barry’s discovery of Australia, an event previously and wrongly attributed to Captain Cook. Barry gave all who followed the confidence to be colloquial – lost since the demise of Lawson and his ilk.
Don’s Party was the high point of the era – a forensic and anthropological study of what was happening in the outer suburbs I’d described as ’the brick venereal disease’. David had a genius for capturing our speech and thoughts, particularly of the sub-culture with political and intellectual pretensions. Don’s Party was revelatory then and still rings true. As it did and does in the film production, already a costume drama when we made it a decade later. No play has better nailed Australians. The shock of recognition between audience and performers was second only to the blue-rinse response to Edna. The vulgarity, the sexual tensions and the politics still ‘work’.
Margaret Throsby
broadcaster and presenter of ABC Classic FM
Far and away my favourite Australian play is Cloudstreet – from the Tim Winton novel, adapted for the stage by Nick Enright and Justin Monjo and directed originally by Neil Armfield. I saw it when it opened in Sydney in a warehouse in Darling Harbour. It was utter magic from start to finish – a truly transformative night in the theatre.
Margaret Pomeranz
film critic and co-presenter of ABC TV’s Movie Show
Without hesitation Cloudstreet. Neil Armfield's production of the adaptation of Tim Winton's novel by Nick Enright and Justin Monjo was one of my most magical moments in the theatre ever. The play, which explores the meaning of life through characters belonging to two working class families is exhilarating, moving and insightful.
Norman Swan
writer, broadcaster, tv producer
It’s still Summer of the 17th Doll.
This was probably the first Australian play I ever saw – just a short time after arriving in Australia in the 70s. I was alone in Perth and it was playing in the Hole in the Wall theatre.
I was by myself in a remote city, in a country that wasn’t what I’d been expecting, which was casting off its Britishness and, I mistakenly thought, searching for an identity of its own.
Summer of the 17th Doll showed me how wrong I was. Here were authentic, recognisable Australian characters in what could only be an Australian story of hope, hopelessness and heartbreak with a fair sprinkling of bulldust. There was no deference, nothing derivative.
I’ve been addicted to the theatre since adolescence in Glasgow where I used my pocket money from washing cars to subscribe to the Citizen’s Theatre, one of Britain’s great rep companies. There I saw Ibsen and Brecht and Orton and others but there was little Scottish playwriting on show.
Summer of the 17th Doll was a revelation to me of what a play can do to reflect a nation and its stories.
