The Club

Though Williamson’s play was written more than 35 years ago, it seems strangely relevant and current given the nature of AFL in 2013. And although the play has achieved iconic status, particularly in Melbourne where Footy is an addiction, we shouldn’t forget that, at its heart, it’s a broad comedy with a stinging underbelly. The plot is negligible….the philosophical questions unanswerable. At what stage does football stop being a sport and become a business? How do you balance the love of sport with the love (and necessity) of making money? Six men in a boardroom explore these dilemmas while back-stabbing, conspiring and treacherously coating their desires with mateship and bonhomie.

Directed by Denis Moore (who played club president Ted Parker in the 2008 revival), the laughs come thick and fast. Seated close to me were Comedian Rod Quantock and legend Max Gilles. When you can make people of that calibre laugh out loud, it’s small wonder that the bulk of the audience was in hysterics.

John Wood, one of our finest stage actors, though known to most still as Tom Croydon from Blue Heelers  (a tag he will carry for life) pulls out all the stops as the opinionated and thuggish ex-coach and president Jock Riley – a product of devolution, who hits his wife and anyone else that crosses him. What could have been a two dimensional caricature becomes a masterful exploration, in Wood’s hands, of an aging Alpha male frantically trying to hang on to his power base. His comedy timing and business in the famous “stoned” scene is perfection, often naïve and childlike, and helps build a complete human we can dislike, but at least understand beyond the boorish exterior.

Geoff Kelso, a fine comic and an under-rated actor, steals the first act as the power-seeking, money-grubbing Club President Ted, only to show us in the second act he is the most sympathetic of the men, with a genuine loyalty to the club and the game. It’s a finely measured performance. Ezra Bix as administrator Gerry is excellent, Peter Finlay as coach Laurie is a little uneven but dazzling in his best moments, and Luke McKenzie and Kade Greenland as the older gun player and the new superstar respectively are fine, but perhaps needed more direction to make the characters less generic.

Shaun Gurton’s set is perfect, as is Jason Bovaird’s terrific lighting and Adrienne Chisholm’s perfect costumes (plus the great music soundscape) take us back to the seventies – when things were more Black and White (pun intended). But it’s Wood’s performance that will stay with you long after the last vestiges of Skyhooks have died away.

Coral Drouyn