Offshore Theatre asks what it means to be an Aussie

EVERYTHING that can and will be said about the Alan Seymour play, ‘The One Day of the Year’, has already been said after it served as a successful HSC text for many years.

But it’s probably hard now to imagine the level of controversy, anger and vitriol it created when it first arrived on the scene in 1958, being banned by the RSL and rejected by the Adelaide Festival of Arts Board of Governors in 1960, where it was first proposed to be performed.

The idea that someone would write a play questioning the place of Anzac Day in the Australian psyche was heresy of the highest order to many. But the reality is, the first signs of push-back were already emerging against the excesses of Anzac Day, whether or not it glorified war, and the fact that everything, including Saturday sport, had to stop for the parade.

And then, during the “unpopular” Vietnam War, from 1962 onwards, support for Anzac Day reached its lowest ebb, as it became the rallying point for anti-war sentiment and just about every other protest imaginable.

But as many HSC students have found over the years, the universal theme of the father–son conflict, set against the background of the beery haze and the heady, nostalgic sentimentality of Anzac Day still has relevance.

And so, it has proved to be at the Rhyll Hall in the past week as the local Phillip Island theatre group, Offshore Theatre, staged a play reading of this seminal Australian work.

More than a piece about the place of Anzac Day, the lack of support for PTSD and the father-son conflict; Offshore Theatre President Amanda Price says the play also explores what it means to be Australian, the question of self-worth and personal achievements in life, and also looks at how much attitudes to women have changed since the 1960s; themes that resonate today.

“There’s one point in the play where, Alf, the father and returned WWII veteran calls his son Hughie’s girlfriend, not to her face, but in conversation with his son Hughie, a stuck-up North Shore bitch or words to that effect. And you can really feel the audience stiffen at an expression that would have been commonplace only a few decades ago.

“The play is about a working-class family post-WW11 where their son Hughie is the first of the family to go to university. While they support him getting a good education, it’s the progressive ideas he comes back with that add to the tension.

“Alf feels he’s a nobody who’s achieved nothing in life except on ‘The One Day of the Year’ when he gets together with his mates on Anzac Day, and he is a somebody, a feeling that’s underscored when he misses out on a promotion at work he believes he’s earned.”

The play features five local actors; Rod Shell as Alf Cook, Ashley Reed as Wacka Dawson, Melissa McMillan as Alf’s wife Dot, Stephen Boon as Hughie and Elenor Kane-Di Paolo as Jan Castles, Hughie's girlfriend.

The format is a play reading, with tables of about 40 audience members in the Rhyll Hall, BYO supper and drinks but you soon forget they are holding scripts. Offshore plans more such events, depending on the availability of good material.

The play commenced its run last Thursday, February 17 and continues this Thursday through to Saturday, February 24-26.

There are limited seats available for Thursday and Saturday night but they’re likely to be snapped up quickly.

You can find Offshore Theatre on Facebook.