Nothing Personal

People who know David Williamson will be on familiar territory with this play. It’s a typical Williamson middle class family crisis, but unlike most of his plays, the male characters get little focus. In fact one of the best things about Nothing Personal is the strong presence of women.

“Nothing Personal is about women coming to terms with losing their power as they grow older in the workplace. David Williamson does a snapshot of society, slathers of urban contemporary Australia… It’s naturalism, the topics and the ways of expressing them [are] familiar and natural,” explained the play’s lead female actor Laurel McGowan, who plays Bea.

“[The language] should be like something you recognise immediately as what you hear in your home [or] on the bus travelling to work, it’s not poetic language, not heightened, it’s natural conversations.”

Written in 2011, the play is set around office politics in the publishing industry – as McGowan explained, it has had its share of controversy.

“Robin Nevin [of the Melbourne Theatre Company] asked David Williamson to write the play. She said ‘I would love something about how women age in power, how they seem to lose their power in different ways’. But what he came up with, apparently, she thought people would see as the story of how Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton took over the Sydney Theatre Company [replacing Nevin], so she declined to produce it,” said McGowan.

“Nothing Personal is a comedy first and foremost. [An] Australian comedy, about family relationships and workplace relationships, and they can be quite tough and hard fought. I think people can identify with [the idea of] looking over your shoulder to see who wants your job, about questioning your own competency, about feeling tired and spent out of ideas, or [asking yourself] has the world changed so much that the skills you were offering earlier are now redundant?” McGowan postulated. (MS)

Apr 2–May 7. Genesian Theatre, 420 Kent Street, Sydney. $25-$30. Tickets & info: genesiantheatre.com.au

BY MEL SOMERVILLE