Tommy Murphy’s first play since Holding the Man is sure to get your blood pumping. The exceptional playwright sat down with Garrett Bithell to talk Saturn’s Return.

Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton, co-artistic directors of Sydney Theatre Company (STC), perhaps said it best: Tommy Murphy is “a bewitching playwright of startling originality”. And next month, the man who adapted Holding the Man for the stage to almost unprecedented acclaim is bringing us the world premiere of his new work, Saturn’s Return, as part of STC’s 2008 Wharf 2LOUD program. Suffice it to say, Sydney’s theatre community is almost falling over itself in anticipation.

In Saturn’s Return, Murphy muses on the life-changing crisis some astrologers attribute to the phenomenon of the planet Saturn completing its orbit around the sun. It is said that the completion of Saturn’s 29-year cycle heralds a period of upheaval and challenging life choices.

“For the most part it’s about one of those moments, that I think happen continually in your life, when you consciously know you’re entering a new chapter,” Murphy tells SX. “That might be positive or negative – but it’s a moment of upheaval where you know you’re going to emerge from it a changed person.

“I’ve seen it impact on a lot of peers, and myself – a final call to adulthood, where you shake your adolescence and grow up, and challenge the choices you’ve made. I’ve heard it described as a crisis of identity, but I would hope that it’s bigger than that and actually a crisis of values as well.

“I’m interested in what a call to responsibility might mean for my generation.”

Murphy has once again teamed up with director David Berthold, his long-time collaborator. They are unquestionably one of our most exciting artistic partnerships.

“You get to a point where you really understand each other’s strengths,” Murphy says. “But that doesn’t mean you get complacent and make the same kind of theatre – that understanding of each other encourages you to challenge each other. And I think that’s what we’ve done with this play. It’s an unusual play, and I guess it’s got a similar theatrical buoyancy to other things we’ve done, but it is uncharted territory for us.”

Although Saturn’s Return is anchored on a straight woman confronting, among other things, her biological clock, the existential dilemmas presented are just as relevant to gay audiences.

“My reasons for writing it are probably particular to a gay playwright in that at its heart is a kind of fertility anxiety,” Murphy tells. “For the purposes of the drama there’s a heterosexual couple and the potential for their sex to be reproductive for the first time – they’ve never even thought about baby-making sex before. And so for the first time in their long-term relationship we see that change in their sex life – and that’s basically the trigger that informs the entire play.

“So at the heart of that there is my own personal anxiety of ‘Fuck, I really want to have kids and how am I going to do that? I’m 30 and I don’t have a womb.’”

But Murphy’s prior concern about being pigeonholed as a writer of ‘gay plays’ has long ago dispersed.

“You just go play to play,” he asserts. “Sometimes characters want to be gay and if you deny that of them you’re holding yourself back for stupid reasons. But they didn’t in Saturn’s Return. It’s certainly about human sexuality – I find that topic unavoidable.   

“It’s a very good topic and we don’t discuss it enough. It’s something we’re afraid of quite clearly and it’s a subject that makes us nervous.”

Indeed, when the remount of Murphy’s award-winning 2005 play Strangers in Between hit Glen Street Theatre in Belrose in May, its ‘homosexual content’ certainly made more than a few North Shore theatregoers nervous. Many walked out in disgust, and the theatre fielded vicious complaints, some even wanting to cancel their entire subscription.

“It did kind of disturb me,” Tommy admits. “My fear is that that response was based purely on homophobia. The conversations I heard in the foyer and the letters that were received by the theatre didn’t seem to have a problem with anything but the fact that some of the characters are homosexual. That’s worrying.

“But Glen Street was great – we got a lot of support from them. I thought the Artistic Director [Rob Robertson] was fantastic, and very brave to program it in the first place.”

But now our attention is firmly fixed on Saturn’s Return. With a fantastic cast comprising Socratis Otto, Leeanna Walsman and Matthew Zeremes, who played ‘John’ in Holding the Man, it’s sure to be a ripper of a play. What does Murphy hope audiences take away with them?

“An erection,” he jokes. “As with any play, you hope that it’s a unique night at the theatre and that it provokes fresh thought. And I think this play is in some ways about the delicate nature of relationships.

“I hope it’s the kind of play that people go to on a date … and then go home and fuck.”

Saturn’s Return at Wharf 2, Sydney Theatre Company (Pier 4 Hickson Road, Walsh Bay), August 20-30 (previews from August 15). For tickets call (02) 9250 1777 or visit sydneytheatre.com.au

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