BRASH AT PLAY NOT BRASH BY THE BOOK |
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) Photo: Matt Grace Adapted by Dean Parker from a book by Nick Hager Directed by Jonathon Hendry at Centrepoint, Palmerston North From 13 Oct 2007 to 27 Oct 2007 Reviewed by Peter Hawes, 15 Oct 2007 |
The Hollow Men is a splendid play based on a splendid book - in tandem so splendid, in fact, that theatres are scared of one version and newspaper editors of t'other.
The play is the first I can remember dealing with NZ politics since Roger Hall's Hansard Diaries in the 1980s, which was a compilation of extraordinary, unbelievable and hilarious extracts from parliament's book of official record. The Hollow Men is a similar compilation - but of utterances never, ever, designed for publication; slimy, greasy, low back-street mutterings as sinister, cynical and contemptuous of humankind as the Nixon tapes.
It is superbly acted, my only beef with the performances being that they are done in full dress whilst this, par excellence, is the story of hollow men caught with their pants down.
You know the story: an intelligent man with vile but sincerely-held views is called upon by like-minded friends to save the nation from a government that refuses to reduce taxes on obscenely rich people. He arrives on a white horse, bumps the leader of his party, replaces him, then readies himself for election as PM. He is an honest man - he says what he thinks, he airs his views. The rest of the play is about `repackaging' him to the state of a normal politician.
The set consists of interesting purple darknesses, electric brightnesses and intersecting metal lines which create parliamentary Aye booths, TV studios and smoke-filled rooms... but are, most interestingly, reminiscent of Rennaissance perspective exercises. Which, on this set, never intersect. More of this anon.
The story of The Hollow Men - which is the story of National's Keystone Cop-outs - is enacted by three busy men in grey suits: Michael Keir Morrissey as Peter Keenan, who believed that "Children should be marching in celebration in the streets, chanting the praises... of Douglas, Richardson and Birch"; Sam Snedden as Mathew Hooton, a Reaganophile pro-tobaccoite who once advocated amending the nuclear-free legislation, and Arthur Meek, as Bryan Sinclair, Don's assistant and contact man with the Exclusive Brethren. The Three Wisecracking Monkeys; all real and extant people - can you believe that?
Ever-astonishing Lyndee-Jane Rutherford is eight women - admittedly one at a time - but imagine playing Ruth Richardson and Katherine Rich and looking like them both! She is also a flesh-creepingly perfect Ronald Reagan.
Will Harris is everyone else in the play bar one. He is, among others, a plangent Phil Goff, an insidious Richard Long and an ineffectually pompous Michael Bassett. In other words he recreates them to a tee.
Last and most, Stephen Papps as Brash. Papps acts the mannerisms rather than the man and does it superbly, curving like an S-bend among ostentatiously straight colleagues, radiating alienation and bearing a constant expression of cherubic bewilderment until taught the rudiments of strategic petulance. His ties curl up like the bloke's in Dilbert, his clean bright spectacles reflect light and advice and he paves the way for arrest for decent acts - in all ways he is one of the great theatrical cartoon creations.
And herein lies my faint unease. It would have been a crime to direct Papps away from this character - it must be seen by all NZers of every political denomination, then installed in model form in Te Papa. (Perhaps over the front door - `Te Papa' after all, means `The Potato' in Spanish - Papps' Brash could be our cultural Mr Potato.)
But the Brash on the stage is not the Brash in the book - or Book as I choose to call it. The theatrical impression is quickly and enjoyably given that Brash was a clown, a dupe manipulated by soulless and crafty men whereas the Book tells us he was a soulless and crafty man himself, aware of his inadequacies and determined to have them nullified by advisers.
Now, back to those straight lines heading towards each other - I don't think Dean Parker's fine adaptation ever quite intersects with the Nicky Hager book - (there's that same difference between the literary version of Once Were Warriors which was male-centred, and the film, which switched the gender view). The play lets Brash off the hook upon which Nicky Hager had so emphatically hung him.
Dean Parker presents Brash as the innocent Pinocchio falling into the evil clutches of the wolf and his cronies, whereas Hager presents him as the evil Machiavelli, drawing the cronies in around him for assistance.
As the Book says of Brash's shared feelings with his cohorts in the Grand Plan: "...politicians do not need the party membership except to supplement fundraising efforts. They do not particularly need the rest of the caucus either. Other MPs often just cause problems. The main things needed are one or more politicians, frontpeople, a small group of hired advisers ... PR advisers, speechwriters and strategists."
Note the word hired.
Ultimately, did Brash fall or was he pushed? No, he fell because he pulled. He pulled them in, they didn't push him in. The noisesome Hooton, for example, was "The first person Brash brought in to help him".
Brash was his own man - we've got to give him credit for the free will to commit political calumny to realise his infamy. Here's a portrait - from the Book - of the seeming `puppet' in the play: "Don Brash was one of NZ's early and leading free market advocates. When he headed the merchant bank Broadbank in 1981 he personally arranged a tour of the country by Milton Friedman the foremost new-right thinker in the world.... Brash stood twice for the National Party in the East Coast Bays electorate and was one of a small number of renegade free market believers on the right of the party who challenged the leader Robert Muldoon's policies...."
Sheesh! Fronting up to Rob? That ain't the activity of a wimp. I have visions of a sketch I wrote for A Week Of It; Muldoon as a young George Washington is cowering, tomahawk in hand, under the wrathful eye of his father and whimpering: "Father, I cannot tell a lie - teach me." Well, the bastards taught Don, all right. They taught him to protect his retro-Reaganist neo-con dribble-down bullshit agenda under a plethora of wide-mouthed lying smiles. But only because he wanted to know.
We leave the play bidding, almost fondly, farewell to a well-meaning fool, whereas we close the Book on a nasty bastard who almost got us. Which is why the play is stunning entertainment - but the book is, imperatively, the Book.
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