David Williamson Plays
Williamson turns his penetrating eye and sharply focused wit to issues of ‘political correctness’ and sexual harassment. A serious comedy, Brilliant Lies is a stimulating contribution to the continuing debate on our changing social values.
Cast : 4M, 3F
Williamson’s famous play about the uses and abuses of managerial power, which in 1976 foreshadowed the great changes that Australian football has since endured, proves even more prescient since the rise and fall of Super League.
Cast : 6M
Postmodernism versus liberal humanism—can an older male academic convert a young female student to a post-structural, post-patriarchal view of literature and seduce her at the same time?
Cast : 6M, 5F
Forty years ago, a young playwright muscled his way onto the scene with a clutch of time-defining plays, including Don’s Party.
With this sequel, David Williamson celebrates four decades of telling the tribe their story.
It’s 21 August 2010, the night of yet another federal election and, of course, yet another election night party at Don’s place. Over the decades, as he and his friends watched governments come and go, they have also closely followed the incoming results from each other’s lives: the tallies of luck and misfortune, the unexpected swings for and against. And through it all, the lesson that this crowd of superannuated baby boomers never seemed to learn is that politics and strong personalities should never be mixed with alcohol.
Cast : 4M, 5F
Sharp-edged, staritical and accusatory, Emerald City lays into the materialism of the 1980s with a razor wit. Within four months of its premiere, five separate productions had opened around Australia.
Cast : 3M, 3F
A boisterous comedy for all ages. Flatfoot (aka Roman playwright Titus) pops up in the twenty-first century, enraged to find his ideas have been plundered through the ages by everyone from Shakespeare to modern-day sitcom writers.
To prove his point, he takes us back to Ancient Rome, where he must convince Dives that his new play will be a hit, neither offending the Roman Censor nor imbuing the servants with fanciful ideas. When he is forced to improvise, pandemonium lurks just around the corner.
Cast : 2M, 1F
The Great Man
A volatile group gathers to plan the funeral of a Labor Party icon. They all claim to know the truth about him, but their recollections are coloured by their own interests.
Cast : 4M, 3F
Sanctuary
An investigative journalist returns to Australia to retire. But the peace is broken by a visit from a student working on his biography.
Cast : 2M
Influence
Ziggy Blasco knows how to turn fear into hate. A talk-back host whose power rests in his influence over his audience, he fills Sydney’s airwaves with his appeals to a particular brand of ‘common-sense’, his hard stance on terrorists and his lashings at political correctness. But in the private sphere, Ziggi’s influence is fading away. A scathing and bitingly funny play about the media personalities that dominate our lives and the divisions that can shatter families.
Cast : 3M, 4F
Operator
Young, charming and a go-getter, Jake is the ideal candidate for an executive position with a thriving local company. He’s welcomed aboard by his hard-working boss (the company’s smug CEO) and co-worker Melissa, who has all the intelligence, industry and integrity Jake lacks.
For Jake has a secret weapon: his skills at exploiting, manipulating and manoeuvring would put Machiavelli in the shade. He’s the Operator.
Case: 3M, 3F
Face to Face
When Glen comes face to face with the employee who rammed his Mercedes, he must acknowledge some responsibility for a series of incidents which helped provoke the crime.
Cast : 4M, 4F
A Conversation
Focuses on community conferencing. It revolves around the confrontation between the family of a rapist and murderer and the family of his victim.
Cast: 2M, 6F
Charitable Intent
Focuses on the pressures and contradictions that erupt as workplace values change.
Cast: 2M, 6F
Peter, a mathematician who embodies niceness itself, is in financial trouble because of his brother’s bankruptcy. His neighbour Margaret decides to seek help from his friends who spend much of their time boasting about their wealth. But while his friends happily take advantage of Peter’s good nature in their own hour of need, how willing will they be to help him in his?
A revealing clash between materialism and ideals.