Rural Wyoming, shortly after the 2017 Unite the Right white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia: a small group of young alumni from a private conservative Catholic college are celebrating the elevation of their mentor, Gina (Kate Raison) to the school’s presidency. But as the evening wears on, the booze flows, and conversations become arguments, it becomes apparent this particular conclave of conservatives aren’t as United as the Right might like.
To Australian audiences, playwright Will Arbery’s Heroes of the Fourth Turning may well scan as nothing so much as an ideologically flipped riff on David Williamson’s Don’s Party. Where that play used the occasion of the ALP’s hammering at the 1969 federal election to dig into the hypocrisies and inconsistencies of then-contemporary Australian leftist thought, Arbery takes a scalpel to the American Right in much the same manner. It’s territory he knows well; his parents are teachers at a real-world private school that is mirrored by the one in the play, and his observations earned Heroes a place on the Pulitzer Prize shortlist. After opening in New York to high acclaim in 2019, the play makes its Sydney debut at the Seymour Centre in the care of Outhouse Theatre Co, following their acclaimed five-star production of the similarly provocative Ulster American.
Much as Williamson did in 1971, Arbery introduces us to a small set of archetypes and then lets them at each other to compelling effect. Our host is Justin (Jeremy Waters), ex-marine and outdoorsman, whose no-nonsense capability and hospitality conceals deep trauma and worries about the world and his place in it. He dotes on Emily (Micaela Ellis), Gina’s daughter, a kind-hearted but devout moderate who is all but venerated by the ensemble due to her stoic suffering of an unspecified chronic illness – the notion seems to be her pain puts her closer to God. Emily’s opposite number is Teresa (Madeleine Jones), a hard-charging firebrand who writes rhetoric for a right-wing blog, worships Steve Bannon, and firmly believes a war is coming for the very soul of America. Then there is Kevin (Eddie Orton): already drunk when we meet him, clearly something of a lost soul, and tormented by both the temptations of the secular world and the inconsistencies he sees in conservative dogma.
Director Craig Baldwin keeps the focus tight on these four as they butt against each other, while production designer Soham Apte reinforces this with a stage design that reduces the available space, confining the action to a section of back porch and a patch of yard. This homey location is in effect a crucible, or perhaps an arena, and as the debate increases in intensity as the play progresses, that combative appellation becomes more and more appropriate.
It’s possible that for ostensibly progressive theatre audiences, the biggest challenge here will be finding a point of identification. After all, these are all conservative pro-lifers (although Emily avers that her friend at Planned Parenthood is still a good person) who voted for Trump (Kevin confesses that he threw up afterwards). Even with villain protagonists currently in vogue, it may prove difficult to square the characters’ ideologies with the viewer’s own. There’s an undercurrent of violence to the proceedings. Teresa espouses a generational model – William Strauss and Neil Howe’s “fourth turning” theory as referenced in the play’s title – that says that violent conflict is not just inevitable but imminent, while the seemingly reasonable Justin admits to similar fears and wonders if he should take robes and join an Italian monastery. The beatific Emily harbours deep resentment due to her infirmity, and “holy fool” Kevin, brought to wonderful stumbling life by Orton, cannot help but pull at the loose threads presented by every heated exchange.
Heroes of the Fourth Turning offers no pat answers. Indeed, the lack of conclusion is the point: Arbery puts the lie to the notion of the conservative monolith, laying bare a movement riven by factionalism, philosophical incompatibility, and straight-up enmity. In the hands of Baldwin and his cast, this is utterly compelling theatre, and the debates raging on the stage will no doubt be matched by those that happen after the final curtain.
Heroes of the Fourth Turning plays at the Seymour Centre until April 23. Get your tickets here.
