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Before he transformed a memoir into a powerful piece of theatre, Tommy Murphy wrote Strangers in Between. The wunderkind sat down with Garrett Bithell.
It almost goes without saying that Tommy Murphy is one of the most exciting playwrights of our time.
Indeed producer Margaret Fink once proclaimed that he has the best ear for dialogue since David Williamson. Big call – but it’s perhaps difficult to refute that comparison. The story goes that after she saw Murphy’s Strangers in Between at Stables Theatre in 2005, she clambered down the stairs into the foyer, desperately asking ‘Who wrote it?’
‘Some young kid’ was the response.
But then came Holding the Man, and suffice it to say, Murphy is no longer just ‘some young kid’. With four sell-out seasons in Sydney alone, he is now hot property. His achingly accessible adaptation of Melbourne-born actor Tim Conigrave’s memoirs sent shockwaves through the theatre community – if there’s anyone left who hasn’t heard of Murphy, it wouldn’t be too bold to suggest that they’d been living under a rock.
It has been three years since director David Berthold first gave him Holding the Man to read. ‘This might be a play,’ he had said.
“It was funny for me because I was given the book with the question: ‘Is this a play?’ Murphy tells SX. “But there was no escaping the fact that it’s harrowing to read. You feel like you are mourning for these people you’ve never met. And particularly for a lot of gay men, you feel like you’re reading your own memoir in a way.
“It’s just such an honest account of a life. It does something that is so miraculous in that Tim offers you every part of his life including his own shortcomings and his own regrets – he doesn’t withhold anything from the reader.
“He exposes himself to judgment in such a courageous way, and I think that’s an extraordinary thing.”
The memoir recounts Conigrave’s 15-year relationship with John Caleo, from falling in love in high school to Caleo’s early death from an AIDS-related illness in 1992. Conigrave died just after finishing the book in 1994, when playwright Nick Enright, who taught him at NIDA, edited it for publication.
The book is treasured by the gay community and bringing it to the stage had risks.
“We were very nervous at the start about how people would receive it,” Murphy says. “Particularly fans of the book who might think that we’re touching something sacred.
“But the thing we always knew was a gift was the role of theatre in the story. So we felt sure that there was a reason for it to be a play as well as a book – the fact that it was a theatre-maker’s life story seemed to be that key.”
But now the spotlight is firmly back on Strangers in Between, Murphy’s NSW Premier’s Literary Award-winning play about a young man who moves from Goulburn to Sydney, uncertain of his sexuality. Following the sell-out Berthold-directed season in 2005, it is touring to eight venues around the country throughout this month and June. Berthold is again wearing the director’s hat.
As Griffin Theatre’s Artistic Director Nick Marchand says: “Tommy and David [Berthold]’s work together … has been one of the real theatrical joys of the last few years. Now audiences across the country will have the chance to see this incredible production that heralded their next theatrical adventure together, Holding the Man.”
Indeed Berthold asserts that “what makes this play so satisfying is the sheer humanity of [Murphy’s] approach. Tommy believes in love, in loving well, and in our ability to heal each other. It’s been a joy to revisit and refine after three years.”
Strangers in Between will open in Queanbeyan, where Murphy was born to “progressive” Catholic parents, the seventh of eight children. His first play, For God, Queen and Country, written when he was just 15, won both the ACT and Sydney Theatre Company Young Playwrights’ Awards in 1997.
He trained as a theatre director at NIDA and was Griffin’s writer in residence from 2004 until 2006. His other plays include Troy’s House, Bendy and Try Hard. Hilariously, he once resisted writing about homosexuality for fear of being pinned.
“It’s just been unavoidable, hasn’t it?” he laughs. “I was joking about my new play, Saturn’s Return, that I’m not even going to allow two men to be alone on stage together – just in case!
“But telling gay stories has enabled me to look at more than just sexuality. Especially with Strangers in Between, the fact that some of the characters are gay is a really useful way of taking a look at male intimacy. So as long as it’s not just gay for the sake of it, I no longer have that fear.
“I’m really interested in sexuality and the sexual lives of my characters – so writing about that is just unavoidable. Also, theatre is very good at making us laugh at things we might not laugh at otherwise.
“And I love making matinee audiences squirm!”
Strangers in Between by Tommy Murphy, Glen Street Theatre in Belrose from May 13 – 24 (bookings 02 9975 1455) and Riverside Theatres in Parramatta from May 27 – 31 (bookings 02 8839 3399).
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