Anyone for tennis?

The Age's critic Helen Thomson does her roundup of the year's theatre today, and naturally there's a spot for the one Melbourne production that provoked the most comment, Hannie Rayson's Two Brothers. This of course was the (publicly-funded) play about a fictional Australian Prime Minister who not only orders that a boatload of asylum seekers be left to drown, but personally murders one himself. Are you still with me? (For more background, this is probably the most balanced review you'll find online.)

Helen opens with general comments about the prevalence of certain themes in this year's theatre - asylum seekers, refugees, war, terror, and the 'underclass':

"Left-leaning commentators...

Oh, you mean, like you Helen?

"...would sum this up as the inevitable detritus of decades of right-wing government policies dominated by the market..."

Well, as long as it's those 'left-leaning commentators' - y'know, those ones...over there... who are saying it. Helen acknowledges that Two Brothers "infuriated even the left with its melodramatic depiction of clearly recognisable wickedness":

"Making Australia's PM a murderer (of an asylum seeker, what's more) was probably more than most could accept."

Gee, d'ya think so?

"My feeling is that director Simon Phillips was too timid in finding the appropriate performance style to match Rayson's exaggerated script. A more controversial, less realism-constrained production might have made the play less controversial."

Now, that first 'controversial' is obviously a typo, so I won't make anything of it, but a nice Christmas holiday puzzle for you is to work out what word Helen meant to go there. And anyway, she has another idea for the 'real' reason Two Brothers tanked:

"Or is it (that) local audiences are too timid and squeamish to embrace politically explicit insults directed at fictional versions of elected representatives?"

Um, I'll get back to you on that one Helen - just now I'm busy working on my play about the sex-life of a fictional Democrat President. I just hope you're not too...squeamish.

[Two postscripts: When Helen Thomson originally reviewed the play, she had nothing but praise for Simon Phillips' direction. Ah well, the benefits of hindsight.

My insider at the Melbourne Theatre Company told me at the time that even they thought it had been staged prematurely, and that it needed another year of workshopping. What kind of a play needs a year of post-script workshopping?]