Gough Review

Theatre Review by Samsara Dunston

What:  Gough

Where:  Long Play – part of the 2014 Fringe Festival

When:  October 1-5

Written and Directed by:  James Cunningham

Performed by:  Warwick Merry

Gough is a one man show being performed at Long Play in North Fitzroy for this, the final week of the Melbourne Fringe Festival.  Written by James Cunningham, Gough is his second foray into Melbourne Fringe, having written and directed The Sheds last year.

The programme notes say that this show is ‘...a personal, intimate portrait...’ of the closed door shenanigans during the 1975 Constitutional crisis.  The theatre at the back of Long Play is like an elegant small bunker, so there was an aura of expectation that we would be hearing some dark and dirty secrets about this famous moment in Australian history which has left everlasting effects on our political psyche.

I was seven years old when this event happened, and one of my most enduring memories of that time is of my mother sitting on the sidewalk crying into the night.  This event broke the trust of the Australian people and left us with suspicion about politics and politicians.  What was unthinkable in those times – a double dissolution – is now common parlance every budget session.

One of the great examples Cunningham provides in the script is Winston Churchill’s response when, on being questioned about the fall of Singapore to the Japanese, he was asked why he didn’t consider that the great guns of Singapore were able to be pointed both north and south, so they could be turned and used to defend the island.  Churchill defended his decisions on the basis that ‘...it never occurred to me for a moment...that the gorge...was not entirely fortified against attack from the northward.’

This position is the one taken by the narrative of Gough.  Cunningham makes the argument that, although everyone agrees that Whitlam was the architect of his own demise by appointing Kerr as Governor General, he himself could not have anticipated how it would happen as it was so beyond understanding that such a fatal flaw existed and, more importantly, would be actioned.  This was our national loss of innocence.

Possibly the one great revelation I had from this show was on this point.  We really don’t get much insight into either Gough the man or Gough the politician apart from that.  Cunningham has basically written a university lecture (or half of one as it only runs for thirty minutes).  Every time he gets near a personal revelation or a quote, he shies away from it keeping everything very formal and detached.

Cunningham apparently got script input from journalists and a speech writer, but I wouldn’t even call this a speech.  Most speeches – the political ones at least – are delivered with passion and emotional hooks.  This script always closes the door on the audience just when you think you are being invited inside.

Merry’s performance doesn’t help either.  Merry is a corporate MC and character impersonator, so I admit that I expected a good caricature of Whitlam.  What we got was a cardboard cut out.  Far too focussed on presenting the speech, Merry never let down the facade to let us see the real man underneath – his passions, his fears, his paranoia, his anger.  We got none of that.  All we got was slow measured talking.  Even his vocal work failed to capture that odd hybrid Whitlam has of learned vowels with Aussie drawl.

The show was interesting in that we learn a little bit about how Frazer and Kerr were able to do what they did and a bit of a look at the mechanisms put in place, but there are no deep insights.  The play is just too short to get us there.  I actually had to ask another audience member if the show was over or if it was just interval.

Overall, it is a nice wander down memory lane.  We get to see the ‘It’s Time’ TV ad, and we see Whitlam’s concession speech on the steps of parliament.  The show just doesn’t have enough depth.  Whitlam comes off as naive, if not stupid, and there is no sense of personal ownership of the events.

This is an inoffensive evening of theatre, and the Long Play bar is a really cool and groovy place to have a top shelf drink and listen to funky tunes on a record player before and after the show.