THEATRE: THE PIG IRON PEOPLE

BY CARLIN HURDIS

The election-night festivities of Labor voters are defined by the permissive knees-up of Don’s Party, and now audiences are invited along to the knees-together prudery of a Coalition celebration.

It is 1996, the night John Howard wins office, and while other guests are clinking glasses, an aspiring writer, Nick (Glenn Hazeldine), is by himself, taking contemplative swigs of Mount Franklin. Water alone won’t drown Nick’s sorrows – a broken marriage, a failed career, the onset of Howard-era philistinism.

Pig Iron People, John Doyle’s first stageplay, is set in Liberal Street, with quarter-acre domesticity compressed, uncomfortably close, into terraces. With shared walls, there is little room for privacy or self-righteousness, and the street’s new resident, Nick, cannot help eavesdropping on his neighbours, the stiff-upper-lip children reared under Bob ‘Pig Iron’ Menzies.

The ex-truckie, Claude (Bruce Venables), makes a ritual of the Sunday car-wash and doesn’t believe in stress, but he is haunted by a pedestrian-struck past. Then there are the Howards, John and Janette (Danny Adcock and Judi Farr), whose bitter marriage remains unconsummated, and whose conversation is limited to television soapies and his memories from the navy.

The satire ranges from subtle (Petty Officer Howard quizzes Nick on his relative pronouns) to slapstick (with Liberal Street residents taking up arms against gun-control legislation) and Pig Iron ends up commiserating with, not ridiculing, the children raised under Menzies – leaving the audience wondering what will be the legacy of ex-prime minister John Howard.

The Pig iron People

Until December 13

The Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House

Tickets: $56-$77, 9250 1777 or www.sydneytheatre.com.au