Don's Party

An adaptation of leading Aussie playwright David Williamson's stage hit about a suburban 1969 Sydney election telly party predominantly attended by about-to-be-disappointed-yet-again Labour supporters. The play crackled with a nice line in witty, scatological abuse as characters tore strips off each other's psyches, marital infidelities were unmasked, and sexual vanities (particularly masculine ones) were deflated. Beresford's clumsy direction blows much of the carefully orchestrated gag timing in the text, leaving it mostly up to the (good) actors. Otherwise, it's a moderately successful statement about the marginality of politics in the lives of the philistines, who profess socialism but are completely preoccupied with booze and birds.