Review: Don's Party

Don’s Party by David Williamson
Sydney Theatre Company
Drama Studio, Sydney Opera House
19th September 2007


Replete with a brick veneer home, a patio, homemade pizza’s and a wicker fan chair, walking into Don’s Party is like walking back 37 years. It’s 1969 and failed writer Don (Steve Le Marquand) and his depressive wife Kath (Mandy McElhinney) are having a gathering to apparently watch the election night vote count.

Inviting their mostly ALP supporter friends, the gathering instead turns into an evening less about politics but more a drunken evening that examines the dreams, hopes and disappointments of the educated middle class within the constrains of their domestic, suburban existence.

Don’s Party is the infamous Australian play first penned by David Williamson in 1971 and was consequently turned into a movie directed by Bruce Beresford and starred Graham Kennedy. It shocked audiences then for the familiarity of the characters and way it exposed the sexual lewdness, extra-marital affairs and the financial woes of the supposedly perfect suburban middle class.

It’s no coincidence that this co-production by the Melbourne Theatre Company and Sydney Theatre Company has been presented on the eve of another highly contentious election battle when many voters are feeling the winds of change as they did in 1969 and when the ‘Kevin 07’ campaign was then the ‘Swing to Labor’ campaign.

It’s an excellent and tight production in which director Peter Evans deliberately keeps away from putting it into a contemporary setting, and instead allows the text to highlight the quietly disturbing parallels between then and now.

With a stunning set and costume design by Dale Ferguson, and a wonderfully dynamic cast that keeps the pace and comedy rollicking along, this is a production that teases out the finer elements of the play, particularly in the second act, when emotions run high and conversations start to dig deep.

The nostalgia it evokes is its most striking element, a time when many of the audience would look back at the 1960’s as a time when they were young and carefree. It was an age of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones but it was also the time of Vietnam, and as the party spins out of control you can’t help but feel a sense of déjà vu. We’ve been through this before, haven’t we?