Theatre

Since its sensational début on Broadway more than sixty years ago, Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? has become an enduring classic of the modern American canon. Its depiction of warring middle-aged couple Martha and George, and their drawing of young couple Honey and Nick into the gravitational field of the savage, alcohol-fuelled contretemps their marriage has become, remains a perennial favourite of the English-speaking theatre. Like moths, actors of a certain vintage are drawn to its bright flame, which shone never more brightly than in the superlative 1966 film adaptation directed by Mike Nichols, with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in the starring roles.

Don’t contradict strange gentlemen. Take special care around the George Street light rail. Watch out for flying pigs. Treat any black cat you might meet with caution, especially ones that speak to you. Woland and his satanic crew have taken up residence at Belvoir.

Ella Hickson’s centuries-spanning epic Oil was first staged at London’s Almeida seven years ago. It has already been tackled by Australian companies, and Sydney Theatre Company’s production (directed by Paige Rattray) is able to draw on several local actors with recent experience in their roles. WA’s Black Swan mounted the play in 2022 (featuring Violette Ayad), and Red Stitch in 2019 (with Jing-Xuan Chan).

Somewhere on West 24th Street in the early 2000s, Susan Sontag asked Terry Castle whether Virginia Woolf was a ‘great genius’. Castle agreed emphatically before offering a tongue-in-cheek follow-up: ‘Do you really think Orlando is a work of genius?’ Sontag’s response was quick and admonishing. ‘“Of course not!.” she shouts, “You don’t judge a writer by her worst work! You judge her by her best work!”’

Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is a perennial favourite on the Shakespeare calendar (pun intended). The twelfth night of Christmas celebrations was the olden-day version of New Year’s Eve, not because it was the last day of the year but because it was the last day of festivities, with everything returning to normal after the hangover. As such, it was celebrated as a topsy-turvy night where homeowners would play servant to their servants and bring them gifts, with much frivolity and goodwill – a bit like the boss getting pissed at the staff party.

Dan Lee’s first play, Bottomless, premièred at fortyfivedownstairs in 2018 after receiving the last R.E. Ross Trust award four years previously. Critics drew attention to the unusually star-studded cast for a début – Mark Coles Smith, Julie Forsyth, Jim Daly, Alex Menglet, Uncle Jack Charles – but its depiction of the residents of a dry-out facility in Broome garnered a mixed reception. The effect of Lee’s writing, wrote Tim Byrne typically, ‘may be unwieldy and overstuffed, but at least it feels rich. At least it has ambition.’ 

What makes the physical and mental disintegration of famous performers so compulsively fascinating to so many people? The breakdown of a talented artist, usually female, brought down by her insecurities and the betrayal and abandonment of those close to her, usually male, is a trope that is endlessly trotted out to and repeatedly lapped up by audiences.

The French-Romanian playwright Eugène Ionesco’s ambivalent attitude towards the power, even the usefulness, of language played out throughout his career. Speaking of Jean-Paul Sartre, Ionesco (1909–94) said that he ‘wrote an important book called Words and there he noticed that he had talked too much all his life. That words are not saying anything.’ Later, Ionesco claimed ‘[w]ords no longer demonstrate anything. Words just chatter. Words are escapism. Words prevent the utterance of silence.’

In his survey of the notebook Arthur Miller kept while writing Death of a Salesman, John Lahr, in Arthur Miller: American witness (2022), relates that early in its composition Miller considered calling the play ‘The Inside of His Head’. Correspondingly, Miller envisioned the stage ‘designed in the shape of a head, with the action taking place inside it’.