The Pig Iron People
The Pig Iron People Sydney Theatre Company at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House; 31 October-13 December 2008; phone: (02) 9250 7777 or www.sydneyoperahouse.com
John Doyle’s debut as a playwright is solid gold rather than pig iron. He has written an ambitious, imaginative play with elements of comedy, tragedy, irony, satire and, along the way, a lovely great sock in the gob for the blue corner of the history wars. It is multi-faceted, bold, tough and affectionate and is wonderfully entertaining.
The title comes from the mid-Menzies era when Pig Iron Bob – a nickname not bestowed affectionately – ruled semi-benignly over a country of overwhelming smugness, conformity and dullness. The play is set in 1996, however, on the day after the election that put John Howard in power. It’s also the day when Nick (Glenn Hazeldine), is moving from post-breakdown institutional care to life as a renter. He finds himself in a street of what he comes to call “pig iron people” – a motley mob of survivors from those far-off halcyon days. (Much wry laughter from 2008’s audience as characters comment variously on the unlikely possibility of Howard lasting long, and other amusements afforded by hindsight.)
Wry is prominent in Doyle’s lexicon, as is a certain acid quality to his view of the Menzies-Howard past. But these elements are tempered and sweetened by compassion and a generosity that prevails in a surprisingly romantic (but unsentimental) tale of two generations. At a party in a house on the corner ofhis new street Nick meets April (Caroline Craig), a former soapie star who currently can’t get a gig. They discover one of those tenuous links that provide miraculous means of conversation when sexual attraction is awakening; in this instance it’s a long-gone on Victorian music hall star.
Nick’s new neighbours are almost as fascinated by April, and the progress of their tentative romance, as he is. Claude and Rosie (Bruce Venables and Jacki Weaver) are a couple of simple rough diamonds with a highly polished Valiant. Jack and Janette (Danny Adcock and Judi Farr) are the street’s social climbers and a tragic little pair for lots of reasons that gradually become apparent. Finally, there’s Kurt (Max Cullen), a German emigre and the obvious eccentric; his German Shepherd, Fang, is the cause of much aggro, as is the vexed issue of who parks where and when.
So much for the neighbours. They are drawn in broad, almost cartoon style, but as the play progresses, each is revealed to have depths beyond cliched Aussie stereotypes, and their stories range from touching to shocking as each unfolds. This is assisted by wonderful performances from Jacki Weaver and Judi Farr: each can invest a word, a look or a pause with more poignancy or laughter than most actors can wring from an entire scene.
As the oafish but gentle Claude, Bruce Venables is also terrific and his sensitive performance is a reminder that film and TV have monopolised him for way too long. Rarely seen but essential to the plot, Max Cullen is weirdly charming and plausible (as only he can be) as the nutty local Nazi you had to have for the full range of neighbourhood hostilities.
As the former naval cook with dreams above his station (and a dark secret as well as dark loathing for humanity in general and his wife in particular) Danny Adcock is way over the top. And the trouble is, because he starts at full volume, he has nowhere to go but up, which quickly becomes almost unbearable: caricature where cartoon is required. There would be more meaning and pathos if he turned it down from nine to about four and resisted the cheaper laughs.
That aside, director Craig Ilott has delivered an appealing and satisfying production overall; Stephen Curtis’s set – of flats and video projections – is clever, effective and simple and it all works well to evoke time and place. The residents of Liberal Street are richly, grotesquely and movingly three-dimensional. Their stories and how they come to be told form a fascinating two and bit hours of wonderfully theatrical theatre.
The man sitting next to me left at the interval because he found it “tasteless”. Each to his or her own, but to me it says a great deal more about the lemon-lipped sensibilities of pig iron people than it does about the play. Sometimes heightened reality is just too high, it seems. John Doyle: congratulations!
