Fifty years ago Alex Buzo’s NORM AND AHMED was spoken of in reverent terms in the theatre underground. It was all over the papers of course but that was mainstream and irrelevant to us young ones who were still arguing with our parents about ‘One Day of the Year’ which was 10 years earlier. There were smuggled scripts and meetings and late night discussions and readings and feminist reimaginings in secret.
Now it’s on the HSC syllabus and a whole new generation has the chance to be shocked by the play. Not for the censored and obscenity-trialled ending but more for the astounding relevance it still holds. I was lucky enough to see it onstage again today, as part of the Pioneer Play Festival, and it has had a bit of a tinker but it’s still damning.
Instead of Eqypt, Norm is now a veteran of the Vietnam conflict and Ahmed wears a kameez and carries a backpack instead of wearing a ‘Nehru-style suit’ and having a briefcase. The updating only shows up in a few places, like mention of Barnsey and Aussie Crawl, but explains the ages of the two cast and brings the play into now. This production is respectful of its legacy, though, and terms like White Australian Policy still resonate.
And the major word, it’s used twice, is still there. In that last 2-word sentence, it was the F word that caused all the problems fifty years ago but it’s that other one, the Australian equivalent of the N word, which still turns the stomach. It’s not the only racist word, the change of war opens the floodgates to some very unpleasant epithets. And they are delivered with a casualness that is rightly in keeping with both the historic and with the contemporary, now underground, bigotry we know exists. Buzo’s vernacular, the riveting penning of class, is all still there, “up the creek without a paddle”, “no flies on him” and other easy-to-the-tongue phases pepper Norm’s dialogue.
As Norm, Laurence Coy, has the hidden agenda just right. He will stoop to cajole Ahmed into engaging with him and even weaken on occasion. He can be a bit stuttery except when devious but the tension we see from the beginning, at his request for a cigarette light, remains for the whole 50 minutes. William Koutsoukis does a wonderful job as Ahmed. He has an immigrant’s desire to please and an intelligent man’s need for expression. He uses his voice so well to distinguish one from the other and often takes his character down to a whisper as if he doesn’t dare be overheard by anyone else except this new fellow nightowl.
The conclusion of NORM AND AHMED is enriched by the slight newness of this production as the prayercap is thrown but it is still horrifying that there is no comeback, no retort, no agency given to the victim. This particular one-off production was a stripped version, T.I.E, black box style with an intro by Coy to the school audience and a workshop afterwards so I expect there was a chance to say what needed to be said.
NORM AND AHMED 50th Anniversary Performance played at the Pioneer Theatre [Facebook] as part of the Pioneer Play Festival.
