The frustrating thing about David Williamson's later plays isn't that they're bad, well not just that they're bad, is that they have so much promise and you could see how easily they could have been better. This has a showbiz background so you would assume the details are right and is on a topic very much up Williamson's alley - competitiveness.
It has virtues: it's heart is in the right place, it argues for a kinder word, it breezes along, it tells a story and you're never quite sure how it's going to turn out. I also liked the character of Rolly, the deadshit friend from school every bloke has - his life marked with constantly failure and disappointment.
The rest just feels... wrong. The way people talk about writing, the conversations they have, the dialogue seems on the nose, people talking the subtext, the details. I liked the idea of an actor trying to get revenge on a colleague they were jealous of, this is very common at drama schools, I just wish Williamson had made the leads men instead of women; he's always been less comfortable writing the latter.
None of it felt real. How you pitched shows, how actors get roles. An actor going to direct a Hugh Jackman starring feature on the basis of a short, then going straight back to acting again and being so big a TV series can only be made with her in the lead...? Does that ever happen?
An actor who worked on a soap complaining that she had no challenges - I know I'm biased because I work on a soap, but if she'd really been on a soap she would have been married three times, lost her memory at least once, been kidnapped... The play has that sort of lazy attention to detail that it accuses actors in soaps of.
This goes for other things like the supposedly massive importance of ideas for a TV show (the idea doesn't sound terrifically original), the fact that Celia is "betrayed" by not being given the lead in a feature (I mean, f*ck off don't be so spoilt) and then by - get this - her boyfriend not making a sale of a TV conditional upon her being in it... come on, it's a multi million dollar investment and she breaks it off because she won't guarantee a job.
Look I get that an ego maniacal fool would think that but Ceclia here is just this nice bland talented person. Maybe that's how Williamson should have pushed this - in broader territory with everyone ruthless. He's done a kind weak satire about ruthlessness. There's only one bad person - Vicky.
I know he was inspired by his sons. He should have made it actually about them - it might have had reality. The writer doesn't even feel like a writer.
Emerald City was wonderful. It felt real. This feels like something written from overhearing a few conversations.
I wish he would rewrite this.
Oh and structurally it's choppy - lots of short scenes, like a movie, many of the scenes could be cut entirely.
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