David Williamson is arguably Australia’s most prolific and accomplished playwright. After announcing his retirement in 2020, Williamson returns with a play that seeks to take an incisive look into the increasing inequalities in the Australian landscape, which acts as the flagship production in the 2024 Ensemble Theatre season. Nearly every seat in the theatre was full and it was clear that there was a lot of anticipation from the audience for this production. 

Williamson sets his story in the fictional town of Wallis Heads on Australia’s coast, where supermarket “shelf-stacker” and local activist Penny Poulter (played by Emma Diaz) tries to take on Alex Whittle (Georgie Parker), a ruthless and conniving businesswoman who is seeking to develop a luxury golf course on the relatively untapped land of the town, which will push prices up and drive renters out. 

This leads to a battle that Whittle is not expecting to have to fight, and when Poulter gains steam amongst the community, Whittle ropes in Poulter’s daughter (Caitlin Burley), a champion surfer, into her campaign with the promise of a prestigious scholarship to UC Davis. The fight becomes dirty, with the mayor of the town (John Wood) and Poulter’s ‘double agent’ PA (Kate Raison) joining the battle, and eventually, the play boils down to a question of whether morality or money will come out on top. 

The character of Whittle is clearly a nod to the mining magnates at the top end of Australian society and Parker plays the role exceptionally well, portraying herself as slimy, shrewd and unlikeable at every moment. 

Burley is a superb actor and commands the stage in every scene she is in. She is incredibly believable in her portrayal of a talented but gullible teenager and truly connects with those on stage and the audience. 

Williamson’s experience and expertise as a playwright shines through in this production. The pacing is excellent, moving quickly so the audience remains engaged throughout. The dialogue is also top-notch, filled with quips and witty one-liners which were greatly enjoyed by the audience. 

However, ultimately, the play feels simplistic, almost turning into a binary moral fable of good triumphing over evil in the end, which seems the antithesis of Williamson’s intention in creating such a work. As a result, the play does not really ‘speak’ to anything, but rather, paints an idealised and somewhat unrealistic picture of the power of the individual to stand up to wealth and greed. 

The play relies quite heavily on cliches and stereotypes, meaning that the action and the ‘twists’ are quite predictable, which results in a loss of interest at times. 

Perhaps most concerningly, for a play concerned with inequality in Australia, it exists almost entirely in a vacuum, with virtually no discussion of any of the intersecting factors that contribute to generational and financial inequality in this country. It felt a little uncomfortable watching a play attempt to deal with the divide Williamson feels so strongly about in an almost avoidant way; one that could be described as divorced from reality. 

To this effect, Williamson opens his writer’s note with the following sentence:

“When I was a kid in the fifties, Australia was the second-most egalitarian country in the developed world.”

It is difficult to reconcile history with this statement. Taking the word ‘egalitarian’ (given the definition of “believing that all people are equally important and should have the same rights and opportunities in life” by the Cambridge English Dictionary) and applying it to Australia in the 1950s feels inappropriate, given the various policies concerning First Nations Australians and People of Colour at the time. Even if Williamson’s statement is solely based on economic factors (which I assume was his intention), I tried to verify this sentence but could not find any analysis to support this claim. It did feel as though the play spent a lot of time longing for a past, which may or may not have existed in the envisaged form.  

While there are certainly some positive qualities to the play, there is a degree of unintended irony to the discussion around the “glass door of privilege” at the end of the play. Ultimately, it is the positioning of this play from behind such a glass door that is perhaps its greatest flaw. 

Rating: ★★★

The Great Divide plays at the Ensemble Theatre until 27^th April. For more information, click here. 

Photo credit: Brett Boardman