National mythmaker throws a new party

DAVID Williamson just refuses to go away, for which we should be thankful.

The guests in Don Parties On reflect the changes since the original party, David Williamson says. Picture: David Sproule

DAVID Williamson just refuses to go away, for which we should be thankful.

He's the only one of his generation of writers, apart from the redoubtable John Romeril, for whom the theatre still has any time, and he remains hostage to its surprises, accidents and risks.

Williamson threatened to retire several years ago but it was almost impossible to imagine, so obsessed is he with making plays. Now he is back on the main stage with a sequel to Don's Party, the play that mythologised the national ritual of election nights.

The original, which I somewhat haplessly directed in 1971 with a hostile cast, has been revived several times, most recently by the Melbourne Theatre Company in 2007. Bruce Beresford's film was released in 1975 to good reviews, although academic critics detest it as the antithesis to feminist values.

The idea to re-imagine Don's Party in the contemporary political and social context is a timely and astute one from the playwright who, for almost four decades, has bankrolled the Australian theatre.

Don Parties On -- directed by Robyn Nevin and starring Gary McDonald, Tracy Mann, Diane Craig, Robert Grubb, Darren Gilshenan and Frankie J. Holden -- opens at MTC next week, followed by a run in Sydney.

Don's return may be to the disdain and chagrin of some critics, who never liked the play or Williamson's brand of heightened comic realism.

"The chant still goes on: you can't have naturalism on stage," the playwright says. "It has to be theatrical; it must be. . . Barrie Kosky."

The first party was hosted by fourth-form social studies teacher Don Henderson (played in Beresford's classic movie by John Hargreaves) and his long-suffering, depressive wife Kath, living in Melbourne's outer suburbs. They were joined by a group of sex-obsessed male friends and their despairing spouses to celebrate the highly anticipated victory of Gough Whitlam over John Gorton in 1969.

The carnal and the political intertwine in the play, to the sound of bedroom doors banging and men clashing in frustration as they drunkenly appraise each other. The male shenanigans are counterpointed by the cutting dialogue of disappointed women.

Don Parties On is set on August 21, 2010, the night of the most recent federal election, and there's another party at Don and Kath's place. Four decades after the original party, the once feisty crowd watching the election eve broadcast is largely elderly, some disappointed, some divorced, some more successful than others, and some surrounded by their children and even grandchildren, all of them inhabiting a new paradigm of politics.

Williamson wrote the first draft six months before the election, assuming that Kevin Rudd would win by a small majority. "I had a stab at it and assumed Kevin was going to sneak back with a few seats," he says. "But then I taped the whole ABC election night and it turned out to be fabulously dramatic. This was wonderful for the piece because the flat-bed TV is beaming out through the play and the characters get disgusted and keep turning it off when the right-wing commentators come on.

"The TV timeline dictates the structure of the party. We finish up after Tony Abbott says he thinks he has won the night."

Not all the original characters return. Mack (played by Graham Kennedy in the movie), the family friend with a liking for photographing his wife from behind the doors of the bedroom wardrobe, has recently died of cirrhosis of the liver. Young Liberals Simon (whom I played in the film, with cravat and pipe) and Jody, his wife who votes Liberal because she loathes the sound of Labor, are gone too.

"Of the originals, Mal is still there annoying everyone; Cooley is too, but, having emphysema, has to lug his oxygen tanks around," Williamson says. "He's married to his much younger wife, of course. Kath is still with Don and Jenny returns to confront them -- like the avenging angel -- after never speaking to them since the dreaded 1969 party."

Don and Kath's son Richard, referred to as an offstage baby in Don's Party, is now 42 and having marital problems that he dumps on his parents, together with his new girlfriend, on election night. And his daughter is there too.

Cooley has become an extreme right-winger, and the political discussion becomes heated, especially as events reach their slightly surreal climax.

"It all turns into the social disaster that Don's Party was, except they can't drink the way they used too, most confined to mineral water, but they still manage to get stroppy," Williamson says.

"The interesting thing is the characters were late 20s in age in Don's Party, wondering how their lives would pan out, just how their hopes and dreams were going to be realised," Williamson continues, a laugh beginning to form. "And by the late 60s they know exactly what happened, and some of it ain't pretty."

He laughs heartily, slapping his hands together in delight.

"The new play deals with three generations and the sort of problems that arise, the way that children are such a mixed blessing, capable of giving parents such extreme agonies with which to live," he adds.

Anyone who has coped with the complexities of extended families will find points of resonance in the new play, he says.

"I loved doing it because it's what I think I do best: moving a heap of people on and off stage and letting the explosions occur."

I'm looking forward to classic Williamson: an almost cinematic series of scenes; exuberant, sometimes toxic jokes; and lines of dialogue flipping into place before the blackout. And what fun Williamson will have with the focus groups, Labor Party stuff-ups, chameleon-like Julia Gillard, posturing Greens and the predictable outpourings of an increasingly shrill Coalition.

Williamson's best comedies have always been sociological: the relationship between characters and institutions, people and their peer groups. At their centre is his acidic recognition of the disparity between how people ought to behave and how they do.

"Don Parties On is the biggest-selling play in the MTC season so far, and there's some pretty class acts in that season," says Williamson, speaking before Christmas. "So if people still want to come and watch my plays after 40 years, I must be doing something right."

More than anything, our most successful playwright is a popular entertainer, closer to his public than his critics.

Don Parties On is at the Arts Centre, Melbourne, January 13-February 12, and Sydney Theatre, February 17-March 8.