The Daylight Atheist
\nBy Tom Scott<\/p>\n
State Theatre Company
\nSydney Theatre Company co-production
\nThe Space<\/p>\n
Murray Bramwell<\/p>\n
A daylight atheist, New Zealand playwright Tom Scott tells us, is someone who doesn\u2019t believe in God until it gets dark. Dan Moffat, the dominant of many voices in Scott\u2019s monodrama, is a man for whom the night is closing in. An Irish emigrant to New Zealand after the end of the war in 1945, Moffat is followed by his wife and infant children. He only ever calls her Dingbat, just as his eldest son is only ever referred to as Egghead. Moffat is a clown, a bully, a drunk, a disgrace as a father, and a staunch friend to his Maori mate Jack. He defies authority \u2013 whether the Air Force, the meat works or his son\u2019s English teacher \u2013 but is a coward with a stammer when faced with his equal. He is a clever wit, but a cruel one, a man with ability, squandered in mean-spiritedness and self-loathing.<\/p>\n
Writer, Tom Scott, a celebrated humorist and cartoonist, has constructed a portrait bearing strong resemblance to his own father, and the Egghead in question is, in part, a painful self-portrait. At the same time, this text is riddled with artifice, with a torrent of jokes, gags, aphorisms, tall tales and vaudeville turns. For the actor this is a daunting mix of substance and blather. The role of Dan – and the voices from his past and alienated present – needs bursts of energy for the wordy exposition and quieter shading for the grim and lonely figure he has become. <\/p>\n
In casting Max Cullen many choices have been made about Dan Moffat – and Adam Cook\u2019s direction confirms this. Cullen has brought his distinctive appeal to dozens of roles. David Williamson wrote Sons of Cain for him, we have seen him in Cloudstreet and The Ham Funeral. The common feature in his performances is a sardonic wit, but it is also a genial one. Max Cullen embodies the good bloke \u2013 and, whatever else he is, Dan Moffat is not one of them. <\/p>\n
Cullen\u2019s performance gets right on to Scott\u2019s capering comedy and makes it work even when the jokes are hoary. But Moffat is a stage Irishman, a hollow man who can hold the floor but can\u2019t communicate. He belittles his wife and persecutes his children. He is a vicious old lag, one of a generation of men who locked themselves in and their families out. His house is the image of his predicament – holed up in one room, he lives in a state of siege. Dean Hills\u2019s ramshackle d\u00e9cor is too amply expansive. This is not the place for Francis Bacon\u2019s creative tilth, it is a pinched, Beckettian man, trapped in his shabby little castle, lobbing derision over the wall to a family that has finally found a way of standing up to his bullying. <\/p>\n
Tom Scott may be writing about matters that are close to the bone for him, but the tragedy of this family\u2019s disintegration is a common tale and a recognizable one. In his Green Room Award-winning performance as Moffat for the Melbourne Theatre Company, Richard Piper went a lot further into the bleakness of this play than Max Cullen has here. Cullen makes us laugh and spins the lines, and has a dozen codger\u2019s looks to win us over, but he doesn\u2019t give us Dan Moffat as the blarney turns to ash in his mouth. <\/p>\n
\u201cCullen Fails to Cull\u201d The Adelaide Review, No.278, September 30, 2005, p.18.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Daylight Atheist By Tom Scott State Theatre Company Sydney Theatre Company co-production The Space Murray Bramwell A daylight atheist, New Zealand playwright Tom Scott tells us, is someone who doesn\u2019t believe in God until it gets dark. Dan Moffat, the dominant of many voices in Scott\u2019s monodrama, is a man for whom the night is closing in. An Irish emigrant to New Zealand after the end of the war in 1945, Moffat is followed by his wife and infant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,16,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive","category-australian-texts","category-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=293"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":781,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions\/781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}