Solus Productions. Holden Street Theatres. 26 Jun 2025

 

It is a one-hander which has been performed by some of the country’s most celebrated actors - a play which has been seen as “a poignant and poetic satire”.
It is clearly a tough challenge, here undertaken by two of the state’s most cerebral thespians, Marc Clement under Tony Knight’s direction.
They present it as a salute to the late Australian playwright Jack Hibberd, he of the classic play Dimboola. Hibberd was deemed a great progressive of the late 70s and a writer who elevated the larrikin spirit of Australians.

 

Here he is depicting an old rogue called Monk O’Neill who has retreated to a comfy humpy in the donga where he is gasping his last in a realm of memories and fantasies. Think Joyce with a nod to Beckett.

The play is Monk's stream of consciousness expressed in a torrent of definitively Australian vernacular.

 

 He’s not a nice old man. He is repugnant.

As depicted by Clement, he is so husky as to be at times unintelligible. 

He is horny, arrogant and noisily breathless.

It is an exhausting-to-watch performance of coughing towards the grave. He has a lot to say on the way, a lifetime of urges and grudges and reflections on a better life and personal brutality. 

 

Once he was cultured and urbane. Fine dining belongs in his past. But now he is a vegetarian sucking on home-grown tomatoes. His dentures drool at the thought of good food, he says.  You can't extract sunshine from a cucumber, he postulates. There is wit and lyricism as well as vulgarity in his rapid-fire ponderings.

 

His pointless days are defined by the ironic demands of the alarm clock plus moods of the sun. And, comically, the perversity of prostate peeing. He is very open about his bodily functions, but the pee scenes bring the much-needed relief - of laughter. 

 

For this critic, who is ancient enough to have known two actual Australian recluses, the depicted psychopathology of Monk O’Neill rings true to type. Indeed, Hibberd was a medic as well as a playwright. Displaced and dying lost souls were not so rare.

 

But whether this work is still one to celebrate, one is unsure. Marc Clements is an actor of expert nuance, a master of emotional subtlety, and one feels this epic grotesquerie is not meant for him, however much the role may have been championed by leading actors of the past. He’s good. His athleticism is good, his droll vignettes at the shack window are amusing, his depiction of loathsome heartlessness truly makes one turn away… but the hoarseness of his gasping verbosity is an exhausting soundscape in itself.

 

One gives eleven out of ten to Knight for always keeping the respectful candle burning on the serious side of theatre culture and, indeed, this work has been performed all over the world, including in translation. One concludes that, of yore, such sick old recluses were international everymen of sorts.

 

It is to be noted that there is an extensive glossary of translated Ockerisms with the program for this production which claims to have been “updated". And one moots that its old misogyny and disjointed desperations have enough threads of dramatic influence to fill a thesis making it thus good grist for students.

 

One notes also that the set of corrugated iron, rocks, flags, blown leaves and dead gardens is a piece de resistance of design. It is a rich and busy eyeful. And, the atmospheric overtones of mortality’s day and night are expertly wrought by Richard Parkhill’s perceptive lighting. There are fine production values all round. And, blessedly, the theatre is not cold so the audience has physical comfort in the arms of this rather discomforting piece of period Australiana.

Samela Harris

 

When: 26 Jun to 8 Jul

Where: Holden Street Theatres

Bookings: holdenstreettheatres.com.au