David Williamson returns, Melba-style, with three new plays

David Williamson has retired – twice – but is back with a new play that tackles greed and the property crisis.

‘I’m not dead yet and I think I’ve got things to say,’ says the Melba-esque playwright David Williamson. Picture: John Feder/The Australian

In 2009, in her biography of her playwright husband titled David Williamson: Behind the Scenes, Kristin Williamson joked: “Even Dame Nellie had the decency to remain retired for longer than David.”

The nation’s most prolific playwright twice announced his retirement from writing new scripts – in 2005 and 2020. But in true Melba fashion, Williamson is back this year with three new plays that will be produced in ­Sydney, Adelaide and his home town, Noosa.

“I’m not dead yet and I think I’ve got things to say,” Williamson, 82, told The Australian as his latest play opened in Sydney.

“People are still coming, so why not?”

The creator of Don’s Party and The Club said he has retired and returned to the theatre twice ­because “I had an irregular ­heartbeat problem and then it stabilised”. He also admitted: “I am a compulsive writer and I am addicted to seeing an audience responding to what I have done. That’s the biggest kick.”

David Williamson at his home at Noosa. Australia’s most famous sea-changer says life is good in the coastal town “if you have the money’’. Picture: Glenn Hunt/The Australian

Many performances of his latest play, The Great Divide, which opened on Friday at Sydney’s Ensemble Theatre, have already sold out. Starring Georgie Parker (of All Saints and A Country Practice fame), the play tackles the hot-button issues of property development and growing economic inequality in Australia.

“A whole generation of young Australians can’t even think of owning a house. What has neo­liberalism done to us? It’s done something pretty bad,’’ Williamson said.

He and Kristin live in up-market holiday town Noosa, and he conceded he was in the top 20 per cent of the nation’s wealthiest property owners.

Australia’s most famous sea-changer said life was good in the coastal town “if you have the money’’. But he knew of waiters, cleaners and others who travelled 50km to work in Noosa because they couldn’t afford to rent there.

“So, yes, I do get inflamed,’’ he said, explaining The Great Divide, which follows a David-and-Goliath battle between a single mother from a sleepy beach town and a powerful property developer, “is not a drama that will hit you with a sledgehammer; it’ll be ­entertaining’’.

Williamson’s other new plays to be launched this year are The Puzzle, set on a cruise ship and snapped up by the flagship State Theatre Company of South Australia, and Aria, which will have an out-of-town tryout in Noosa.

The prolific playwright first retired in 2005 after being hospitalised several times suffering from cardiac arrhythmia. An operation and a new drug treatment saw him pick up his pen again.

Playwright David Williamson retired – again – in 2020. Picture: Glenn Hunt/The Australian

In 2020, marking 50 years as a playwright, he announced a second retirement. Two plays produced by Sydney’s Griffin and Ensemble theatres, Family Values and Crunch Time, were to be his last new works for the stage.

The tributes flowed for Williamson – who also wrote the AACTA-winning screenplay for the film Gallipoli – with Queensland Theatre and the Melbourne Theatre Company co-producing a revival of his widely admired 1987 play Emerald City.

Our most produced dramatist claimed The Great Divide’s theme of economic and housing inequality was “the big elephant in the room’’ that had been largely ignored by theatre companies.

He added, provocatively: “It’s very distressing and annoying for a top-level woman to strike a glass ceiling, but it (life) is probably far more depressing for the character in my play, Penny, who stacks supermarket shelves and who’s paying half of her income in rent.

“She’d die to have a glass ceiling problem.’’