Travelling North by David Williamson.
Directed and designed by Cate Clelland. Costume Design Team: Claire
Middleton, Darcy Abrahams and Cate Clelland. Lighting Design: Craig Muller.
Sound design Neville Pye. Properties Brenton Warren. Canberra Rep Theatre. June 11 –
27 2026. Bookings: 0262571950
Reviewed by Peter Wilkins
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| Danielle Spiller as Frances, Margeaux Arundel Williams as Sophie, Matilda Millar-Carton as Helen in TRavelling North. |
Playwright David Williamson has
been described as the storyteller of his tribe. Plays such as Travelling
North, currently playing at Canberra Rep provide a glimpse of ordinary
middle class Australians at a time in their lives when they are responding to
the events within their own lives and the social circumstances of their time.
Williamson’s comedies of social manners are witty and perceptive insights into
the foibles and follies of human nature, as well as comments on the
circumstances of the time. Travelling North was written by Australia’s
most successful playwright in 1972 in the declining year of the Vietnam War and
the resurgence of the Labor Party under Gough Whitlam. Former Communist Party
candidate Frank (Pat Gallagher) and his companion Frances (Danielle Spinner)
are celebrating their first anniversary together by seeking out an escape from
Melbourne to the far north of Queensland, away from family and friends and in a
place where they can begin a life together in their latter years. Frank is in
his Seventies, a widower, with a daughter Joan (Stephanie Lieshaut) and a son
Martin whom he hasn’t seen in years and Frances is much younger and a divorcee
with two adult daughters, Sophie (Margeaux Arundel Williams) and Helen (Matilda
Millar-Carton). They have reached a time in their lives when they are both in
search of an escape from the old and an embrace of the new.
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| Danielle Spiller as Frances. Pat Gallagher as Frank |
With his keen insight into characters confronting a break with the past and its consequences on family left behind far away in the city and the pressures of growing older and starting a new life with a new partner, Williamson has written a play that is witty, heart-warming, cautionary and an accurate depiction of the human struggle for independence and a fresh start in life. Williamson writes real characters in real circumstances facing real pressures and searching for real solutions. They are wholly human, at times comical, at times absurdly contrary, at times contradictory and at times conciliatory. To the largely senior audience members at Rep’s production, the characters, their arguments and their responses are entirely familiar. It is what makes Travelling North such a touching, funny and accessible play.
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| Steven Kennedy as Freddy Wicks. Pat Gallagher as Frank. Danielle Spiller as Frances |
I was puzzled by director Cate Clelland’s static production. It seemed that Clelland, an experienced and versatile director, had focused on the thematic nature of Williamson’s work. The themes are explicitly highlighted by a production that avoids any excess theatricality. Freddie, their new neighbor (Steve Kennedy) a supporter of the war in Vietnam, offers a contrasting view to Frank, but retains the Aussie virtue of neighbourly mateship. Frank’s doctor Saul Morgenstein (Adrian Breen) expresses dismay at Frank’s decision to self-medicate after his diagnosis of heart disease. The views and relationships of the younger generation are well depicted by Lieshout and Williams and Millar-Carton as examples of sibling rivalry and family inter-reliance. Gallagher and Spiller truthfully chart the emotional rollercoaster journey of their new found love, in which romantic love turn to dutiful love, love lost and love redeemed. Clelland appears to have focused on Williamson’s highly naturalistic text and the actors deliver the lines with conviction. Only occasionally do I have a sense of a more complex character beneath the dialogue. As Helen, the younger, more feisty daughter, Millar-Carton gives a silent moment of resentful lack of attention as Frances heaps praise on Sophie. It is a moment in the production that allows an actor to express a deeper complexity.
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| Pat Gallagher as Frank and Danielle Spiller as Frances |
The flow of the play on stage is
hampered by Williamson’s series of short vignettes, easily managed as film but
awkwardly presented on stage, which I suspect may have contributed to a
production that focused more on the text than the more subtle aspects of the
character. There are 13 very short scenes in Act 1 and 20 in Act 2. These are
presented between scene changes that interrupt the flow and draw out the
performance. Neville Pye’s sound design cleverly accompanies the brown-outs
with soothing classical music, but the production remains fragmented and many
of the scenes are played at the rear of the setting against a brightly painted
sub-tropical plant scene. If Williamson was preparing a film script that would
star Leo McKern and Julia Blake, then a stage director would need to adapt the
play for the stage and a live audience.
Having said that, I as a senior
member of the audience, familiar with the period and the biographical nature of
Williamson’s observance of his tribe, was convinced and entertained by the
performances but I left the theatre feeling that the production could have
taken less time to travel on its journey.
