The Blind Giant is Dancing

Stephen Sewell wrote this political drama in 1983 as Australia slipped into recession and drought and faced economic changes which, while enhancing wealth for some, forever shifted the moral debate around our national and community behaviours. 

Despite illusions of freedom, capitalism he says always finds a way to win.  This surviving Marxist talk, and allusions to Allende’s lost democracy in Chile just a decade earlier, may date this play but only superficially.

This is an intensely urgent epic, as what’s at stake in its complex political intrigues burns meaningfully through a host of different personal relationships.

Central is leftist social economist Allen (an empathetic Dan Spielman) whose fight to replace Sussex Street apparatchik (a matey snake in Geoff Morrell) becomes so consuming all principles are sacrificed. 

Allen’s bond with his Jewish feminist wife (a nicely contradictory Yael Stone) sparkles with vicious debate; while his messy affair with a mysterious journalist (Zahra Newman) shows his loyalties blurring. 

But its Allen’s Catholic working family - his father (a masterful Russell Kiefel), mother (Genevieve Lemon) and once admiring unionist brother (Andrew Henry) - who are the heart of this play, dramatising the political killing off of Australian manufacturing.

Other effective actors - Michael Denkha, Ivan Donato, Emma Jackson and Ben Wood - populate this rigourous, sometimes mystifying plot of political machinations.  

Eamon Flack keeps our incredulity suspended by a pacy direction and inventive seques through Sewell’s often snappy scenes.  Some intimate moments, so essential in underpinning the political story, are lost in the rush and noise, including the full arc of Allen’s unravelling idealism. 

Dale Ferguson’s set is dark and sparse, around a central wall sometimes solid and ablaze with LED lights or opened up to prison bars.  His costumes are well-matched to character and thankfully without 80s overkill.  Because Sewell’s classic lives far beyond its time - even if, twenty years ago, I found Neil Armfield’s revival on the same stage ultimately more stirring and comprehensible.

Martin Portus

Images: Zahra Newman and Dan Spielman, & Dan Spielman and Geoff Morrell. Photographer: Brett Boardman.