Play review - "Cruise Control" by David Williamson (2014) (warning: spoilers)

Williamson once wrote a famous article complaining about the cashed up bogans he ran into on a cruise and when I heard he was doing a play about cruise ships I thought "terrific" - I figured he was going to do something based on that experience. Two snobby elistist types who live in a Fairfax/ABC bubble go on a cruise and have to rub shoulders with Howard's battlers. It had great potential and Williamson had enough self awareness and insight to do it justice.

This is not that play.

This is more Noel Coward. 

Three wealthy couples are on the QE2 crossing the Atlantic. A bra boy and his private school wife, a book editor and her novelist husband, a Jewish gum doctor and his socialite wife. Two of the women basically do nothing, living off the men. There's a lot of drink swilling and talk, sometimes action, of adultery and shoved-in new pop culture references, notably 50 Shades of Grey.

The characters are not particularly fresh especially the novelist who is pure villainy - snobby, hateful, a wife beater, lecherous, sex obsessed. There's not a huge amount of laughs or satire. There is a kind, patient, grateful Philippines steward who is almost a caricature in the way Williamson writes him (he practically has "noble savage" tattooed on his head - a lot of Williamson ethnics fall into this category). 

It's mostly light so the ending which results in the novelist's presumed death is surprising but doesn't work - it's also surprisingly ambivalent for Williamson (it hints the bra boy murdered him, but also possibly the kind Filipino steward may have done it with the wife.)

I wonder why Williamson let this one go through? Did he want to write a role for his son? He was begged for a new play?

It feels as though it needed a few more drafts - to build towards a darker conclusion (which would be fine) the first part needed more work, I felt.

I don't think it needed so many short scenes either - I sense that a more engaged Williamson could have done it in longer scenes but he's lost some of his art in that department.

This is one of the bad later ones.