Third World Blues
By David Williamson
Directed by David Berthold
Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House
Review by Brendan Doyle
Williamson wrote the first draft of this play in 1972, he says, "in a white heat of rage about the Vietnam War and the brutalities our Australian troops had committed against the Vietnamese". Even in this much-tempered rewrite, Third World Blues is still a play of passion.
The original version, Jugglers Three, included flashbacks showing Australian soldiers behaving with appalling bestiality. One scene showed them sodomising the corpse of a young Vietnamese woman. The director of the Melbourne Theatre Company recoiled in horror and insisted Williamson rewrite it. It ended up as "a five-door marital farce".
This version is nonetheless a powerful piece that speaks to an Australian audience in a popular, often vulgar language. The reality of the war and its aftermath is there in the characters and their words, feelings and memories. Even as we laugh at the foibles of these familiar characters — the play retains many elements of farce — we sense the real pain that real people suffered, on both sides of the war.
The action is set in a Melbourne house in 1972. A nondescript living room, dominated by a table tennis table, fills the stage. Into this empty house comes Graham, returning home from Vietnam where he was a conscripted soldier.
In walks Neville, "youngest ever" economics professor, who announces that he has left his wife and that he and Graham's wife Keren have been living together for three weeks. Graham, controlling his rage, challenges Neville to a game of table tennis — a reference to China's "ping-pong diplomacy" with the US at the time — to let off steam. And they do, with Graham ruthless in his criticism of Neville's self-righteous attitude towards conscripts.
Keren arrives and tells Graham that their marriage was over before he went to Vietnam and Neville was a sensitive man who supported her in her musical ambitions.
Just then, as in the best farces, Neville's wife Elizabeth walks in, pregnant and threatening to cut Neville off from his children completely.
Shortly after, Dennis (Jack Finsterer), a fellow conscript who saved Graham's life, rushes in with his baby daughter. He is running away with her in a stolen taxi and has just robbed a service station!
The action continues in ever-increasing chaos, including a scene where a gun-brandishing cop who threatens to shoot Dennis ends up accepting half the robbery takings.
In a final poignant scene, after Neville has gone off with his wife, Graham tells Keren about his nightmares ever since he was responsible for one of his fellow soldiers being shot. The play ends with a sense of renewed hope after the recognition of suffering and loss.
Graham, beautifully played by Joel Edgerton, is a compassionate, intensely theatrical character who dramatises his own experiences in language that moves freely between street slang and mock Shakespearian histrionics. He has an honesty and humanity that his rival, Neville, played by Nicholas Eadie, doesn't have. When Neville talks about "the human condition", Graham retorts: "The human condition! Some people are rich and have a lot of power. Others are poor and totally powerless."
It's a pity that the poor and powerless won't be seeing this production at the Drama Theatre, where prices are outrageous, because the play deserves to be seen by a very wide audience.