Sanctuary
by David Williamson
Playbox Theatre
Playhouse

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Sanctuary, David Williamson’s newest work, is a two-hander directed by Melbourne Playbox director Aubrey Mellor. It is a distinctly more serious piece than recent Williamson exercises such as Money and Friends and Brilliant Lies. They were serious too, of course, as the playwright never loses sight of issues and situations which give a new or different glimpse of zeitgeist. But conspicuously propelling his dissection of nouveau riches or questions of sexual impropriety were the trademark quips and one-liners which give his dialogue that ring of confidence -at the expense of sustained theatrical impact.

In Sanctuary there is a marked absence of comic insurance, if anything it is a rather earnest work. There is also a willingness to embrace large questions- although this time they are too large.

The setting is a well-secured ultra-wealthy Gold Coast retreat, the kind of mirage Christopher Skase rather fancied. Former Wangaratta butcher’s boy, Robert Bob King is an international journalist- Time, CNN, you name it- who has made his bundle and headed for the Australian Riviera. Into the onyx-veneered confines of his apartment comes John Alderston, a puritanical young academic who has spent four years researching King’s unregal career and is now turning his thesis into published biography.

It is, characteristically, a terrific Williamson idea. He has a gift for spotting promising dramatic situations. This one is nicely focused as well having a universal theme- the encounter between the flawed life of action and the priggish absolutes of theory. It is elemental stuff; youth and age, academicism and pragmatism, principle and worldly success, envy and pride. One suspects Williamson has an eye on a wider audience with the character of King, an internationalist public figure who has been there and almost-done that – Timor, Guatemala, Panama, the Gulf War. He recognises the global nature of information, the ubiquity of infotainment, the capacity for power to reinvent itself.

The play is set wholly in King’s apartment, smartly dressed by designer Shaun Gurton in gunmetal high-tech anonymity. Bob likes to muck about with his remotes, altering the lighting, twiddling the ambience. Tall black columns and artful strelitzia signify an unruffled privacy, overtly ensured by a backdrop of twelve foot cyclone wire. William Gluth’s Bob King is a frenetically sardonic figure, worldly in his wit, a likeable well-groomed ratbag. John, played by Felix Williamson, is his grungy opposite. Diffident, serious to the point of pomposity, he agitatedly pads about in his Converse sneakers avoiding King’s probing ironies, resting his defence on moral ground so high it’s enough to make your nose bleed.

The trouble is that their positions are so opposed, their temperaments so stereotypically discrepant that the play has nowhere to go but into extremes which beggar credulity. It is possible that two such people might exist but they are so one-dimensional that they cannot sustain ninety minutes’ scrutiny.
Of course, there are revelations and reversals. The young man has done his research assiduously, King, in riposte, indulges in confession and self-regarding introspection. But if the play is to get out of a spiralling catalogue of wordy debate about international diplomacy, global media, the perfidy of dictatorial regimes, the solipsism of intellectuals and the total, delicious corruption of success, then something has to happen. And so it does, at the end of Act One. Provoked by King’s reptilian wit, the young would-be Boswell finally clobbers him, booting him senseless on the floor of the apartment.

Bleeding and blinded in Act Two is King in for insights of Shakespearean proportions ? Well, never one to let an embolism get in the way of symbolism he goads Alderston with his own moral contradictions- will he seek medical help though it will reveal him as a violent criminal, even a murderer ? Faustian bargains are promised, temptations of wealth, and fame as the official biographer. King unloads more secrets of the beehive- a night ride with a death squad and other Death and the Maiden atrocities. And the secret of Alderston’s extreme political correctness ? He was buggered, dear reader, at a private school.

When ideas and political positions become so crudely psychologised the play has nowhere to go but into ranty melodrama- despite the considerable efforts of the players. The play carries the imprimatur of distinguished journalist John Pilger and it is a substantial attempt to deal with questions of conscience but that doesn’t guarantee its workability as theatre. It needs a severe pruning – there are speeches here that would collapse an actor’s lung. William Gluth gets through them, but with little or no energy to spare for anything else. Felix Williamson, far less adept, does not manage his lines. Although his rendering of the surly, feckless Alderston is convincing enough- at least until the plot itself has so many about-faces your head, and credulity, start to spin.

There’s a good play in amongst this but it is not within either Aubrey Mellor’s or the actors’ gift to provide it. True, the performances could have been toned down and more experience may have made for better stagecraft. But it is the play itself which needs more shading. David Williamson admirably risks a talking piece but then fails to give his characters enough that is convincing to talk about. The encounter between a famous personage and his historian remains potent dramatic material but, when Sanctuary turns into giddy contrivance, all you want to do is run for cover.

The Adelaide Review, February, 1995 (?)