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Leading Australian playwright Michael Gow spoke to Garrett Bithell ahead of the Sydney revival of his acclaimed play, The Kid.
Twenty-five years ago, Michael Gow launched his sparkling career with a remarkable play that took Australian theatre by storm. Now, 20 years after Peter Kingston’s celebrated Griffin production, The Kid returns to the SBW Stables Theatre from March 22, and introduces an exciting new generation of up-and-coming actors.
According to Gow, The Kid, with its themes of disillusioned youth, fractured communities and rural exodus, is as relevant as ever.
“The social fabric is now so broken down in terms of families and young people and child abuse and all of that nightmare that I think it will have a slightly different meaning,” he tells SX.
“It won’t seem quite so mythical or from some other planet. I think the characters will seem like everybody; we’ll know them this time.”
Gow is regarded as one of Australia’s leading playwrights. In general his dramatic writings analyse the experiences of the lower middle class family since the second world war.
His explorations range from revealing their equivocal resilience in plays such as Away, which is one of the most frequently revived works in Australia, and On Top of the World, to their fracturing and dispersal, exemplified in The Kid and Furious.
Why such a patent focus? “Because I had one,” he laughs. “It’s the thing I’m fascinated by. I think it’s the driving force of human life in a way. And I don’t mean the standard Mum, Dad and kids – whatever bunch of people you put together to help you get through, by choice or by force. What interests me is how the dynamics of those groups work.”
Last year Gow’s new play Toy Symphony premiered upstairs at Belvoir Street Theatre to rapturous acclaim. It was a highly personal work – the complete baring of this creative soul.
“My parents died within six weeks of each other in 2004,” he reveals. “That was such an amazing experience, and it kind of left me slack-jawed for about 18 months. So I think part of it was trying to write my way out of that – out of some horrible room that I’d been so stuck in.
“And The Kid is the same. The thing that inspired it was I was an actor, and a lot of the experience of being an actor was being in various dole offices around Sydney. Actors are so transient and subject to the whims of other people, like the unemployed, and spending a couple of years in that world was amazing.
“You could feel yourself slowly getting used to it and becoming a long-term dole bludger.”
Gow raves about Richard Roxburgh, who played the lead in Toy Symphony. “I was very lucky, I think,” he muses. “He just embraced absolutely everything and I always say that the best actors are the ones who aren’t afraid of appealing really horrible on stage.
And Richard was so good at just being vile to people, which is great. People really like malcontent characters.”
Company B’s production of Toy Symphony scooped the pool at the Sydney Theatre Awards, and Gow won the award for best new Australian work.
“I was glad for Company B and the cast and the director [Neil Armfield],” he says. “It was great to have it acknowledged.
“Personally, it was great for about an hour! It’s all ‘yay!’ and you leave and the champagne wears off and you think ‘well, and then there’s tomorrow’. But it’s always nice to be patted.”
Gow is currently Artistic Director at the Queensland Theatre Company – a role he has held since 1999. But Griffin has had a long association with him, having presented five of his plays over the last 25 years. As The Sun Herald once commented: ‘Gow’s writing touches the soul of the Australian’.
The Kid by Michael Gow, SBW Stables Theatre (10 Nimrod Street, Kings Cross) from March 22 – April 26. For tickets called MCA TIX on 1300 306 776 or visit www.griffintheatre.com.au.
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