As a general rule, there is at least one new David Williamson play each year at the Ensemble Theatre. The Company has started the new year with the master’s latest play simply titled ‘Operator’. There was a special quality about this year’s premiere, one of the playrights son’s, Rory Williamson, played Jake, the title role.
As the play’s action unfolds it soon becomes clear that Jake is more of an Operator than the smooth operator that Sade wrote about it in her hit song. (I noted that ‘Smooth Operator’ was the song that was played through the theatre as the audience streamed out of the theatre after the performance). Not only was Jake a smooth operator with the ladies he was also a manipulative and dishonest operator as he climbs up the work ladder. His rise is meteoric, from winning a job as a salesman in a company that supplies exercise equipemnt through sheer bravado, he manages to become the office manager and then is headhunted to work in a managerial role with a larger company. He does it in not a particularly original way…..by stabbing everyone in the back!
The bottom line is that Williamson junior has to play a nasty, perverse character. Well.. actors are supposed to enjoy the challenge of meaty roles, so I guess he has to thank his Dad for the chance…What’s more, Rory is no novice actor, with a background that includes having graduated from NIDA in 1999. Rory shares the stage with a fine group of actors; Henri Szeps plays the Company’s CEO, Douglas, Amanda Crompton is Douglas’s slinky personal assistant, Francine, Melissa Gray plays Douglas’s niece and office worker, Irena, Michael Ross is office manager, Alex, and Katrina Milosevic plays Jake’s co-worker, Melissa. The Ensemble’s Artistic Director Sandra Bates has again taken up the mantle and adds another Williamson play to her directing credits.
It is common knowledge in theatrical parlance that a new Williamson play is box office gold. Prior to opening night the play’s season was already well booked. There was a strong, positive response to the play on its premiere, with both the playwright and the director being brought onto the stage to share the warm applause from the audience.
It is the night after the ‘euphoria’ of opening night and I have had time to pare down my own thoughts about the play. I rate the play as a clever, solid, entertaining example of popular theatre, aided by a strong production. It didn’t have that x factor to make it memorable. There was nothing particularly new in the story Williamson told. The story of a ruthless corporate climber brought back flashes for me of Louis Nowra’s ‘The Temple’ at the Sydney Theatre Company that starred Colin Friels. There was, in fact, something quite melodramatic about the play and Jake’s character, and it felt at times the audience were on the verge of hissing and booing. Jake’s character wasn’t so far removed from say Charles Dickens’s Uriah Heep’ or Moliere’s ‘ Tartuffe’. The thing that made the play work was the skill with which Williamson told his story, and of-course there was his flair with his one liners.
A play is not a Williamson play without our most popular playwright firing some broad-shots at selected targets. With ‘Operator’, Williamson has plenty of jibes at the shonkiness ofd the fitness industry. I loved it, and one could sense the audience enjoying the frequent reference to the latest fitness equipment that came out on the market, promising the world, selling like hotcakes, and then people getting cold feet when they realise it really doesn’t make a difference. Another Williiamson target was popular psychology. There was a number of scenes where a characters attempted to have a showdown with another character and started with, ‘when you do this…it makes me feel’, and the response by the other character is, ‘you’ve done a course haven’t you’. Sure, the line got laughs, but personally it was more than a little cheap and cynical.
To end up, a note about the performances. Rory did rise to the occasion and gave a confident, charged performance as the Maciavellian Jake. The stand-out for me however was the performance by Michael Ross as Alex. Michael has been a regular performer at the Ensemble for many years. Always a reliable performer, his work on opening night showed him at the top of his craft.