Dead White Males by David Williamson, MTC/STC, 4 June 1995

 

Dead White Males by David Williamson

By MTC / STC

At Playhouse, Melbourne Arts Centre until July 8, 1995

Reviewed by Kate Herbert round June 4, 1995 for The Melbourne Times

 

David Williamson's brand of social satire sits adjacent to Frontline and Fast Forward. Dead White Males is a marriage of literary theory and sketch comedy.

 

From the outset Williamson is determined to prove his particular premise that humans do not need ideologies to live.  This is obvious because all the visible ideologues are complete dickheads, albeit very funny dickheads.

 

The literary theory professor, played with uncannily accurate smarmery by John Howard, is a post-structuralist, feminist, multiculturalist philanderer who despises the strictures of Liberal Humanism. This smug hippie manipulates his students, demanding tacitly that they toe his particular "ism" line and seducing them if they successfully mirror him: absolute narcissism.

 

The malleable undergraduate mind of Angela (the dynamic Michelle Doake) undergoes a great transformation as she realises that people's lives are more fluid and less doctrinaire than theory.

 

Wayne Harrison's direction is crisp and intelligent. The production gallops along and is really very funny if you can tolerate your sacred cows being dashed to the ground.

 

Now everybody gets an hilarious, metaphorical bashing in this play but radical feminists fair worst. Most characters remain fairly two-dimensional with the only truly sympathetic character being Angela's warm, slightly badgered, almost "reconstructed male" dad, played by an adorable Henry Szeps.

 

The women are unremittingly oppressive, shallow harridans. Even pithy, racist Grandpa (the exceptional Simon Chilvers) gets a soft and squishy scene. And Shakespeare, the most prominent "dead white male" writer in the western world, is played as a charming fellow, well-met by Patrick Dickson.

 

There is a sort of glib arrogance about everybody. The rather didactic argument about male/female differences is divvied up between characters but there seems to be a single narrative voice. The often-academic language may alienate some people but there are enough gags and wacky characters to satisfy everybody.

 

KATE HERBERT

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