NORM AND AHMED and ROOTED BY ALEX BUZO

TEACHER’S NOTES BY TERRY STURM STUDY GUIDE The performing arts publisher www.currency.com.au Alex Buzo’s Norm and Ahmed AND Rooted by Terry Sturm

1. Introducing the plays 1 2. The critics’ views 1 3. Questions for discussion 1 4. Further reading

1. Introducing the plays written according to this naturalistic formula— according, that is, to criteria which make Norm and Ahmed and Rooted (first performed verisimilitude (the naturalness with which real in 1968 and 1969) are the two earliest plays of a life is represented on stage) the dominant aim playwright who has established himself as one of a play’s action, characterisation and speech, of the most gifted of that younger generation of and of its set design, lighting and costuming. Australian writers attracted to the theatre in the One of ’s best known plays, Ray Lawler’s late 1960s and 1970s. Alexander Buzo has now had Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1955), was a a dozen plays—on a wide range of contemporary major achievement in this mode, and it remains themes—performed by the main professional important in the work of dramatists like David companies and little theatres throughout Williamson. Australia, and many of them have been performed Our habit of thinking about and judging outside Australia (in England and the United plays in such terms is so ingrained that it may States) as well. seem difficult, if not self-evidently absurd, to Yet his work has not been without its think about them in any other terms. Yet a detractors. His verbal flair and comic vitality, and moment’s reflection about drama—about any his capacity for sharply-edged social comment, art—might make us aware that this is a very have been generally acknowledged; but he partial, incomplete view of the range of effects has also been criticised as deficient in skills of which many different kinds of drama have construction and characterisation. The ending achieved in the past, and continue to achieve, of Norm and Ahmed, for example—on which so through methods that are not tied to the literal much of the play’s effect depends—has been or documentary representation of reality at seen as arbitrary, insufficiently motivated by all. Some of the main theatrical conventions of anything that occurs earlier in the play. And Shakespearean drama—the playing of female Bentley, the protagonist of Rooted, has been seen roles by boy-actors, the use of poetry and the as an inadequate characterisation. A more realistic habit of having the actors address the audience presentation, it has been argued, might have through soliloquies—are quite implausible, made him less helpless and passive, less willing to according to real-life criteria. The use of a chorus acquiesce in his own humiliation and defeat. in the great Greek tragedies, both to comment Criticisms like these are based on the on and add emotional depth to the main action, assumption that Buzo is striving after realism in is also a non-realistic or stylised device in such his plays, and failing to achieve it. If they were plays. In twentieth century painting, to take correct, the plays would indeed be badly flawed. an example from a very different art form, the It may be, however, that the assumption itself representational aesthetic has been almost is wrong. A great deal of fine drama has been wholly eclipsed by forms of painting ranging from

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various distortions of reality, to pure abstraction, throughout its history has provided dramatists in which no ‘real world’ is recognisable at all. with a medium for serious statements about Alexander Buzo has on occasion disassociated life. The spectacle of people behaving absurdly himself from readings and productions of his or irrationally, even as we laugh at it, invites us plays which interpret them primarily as literal to ponder the gap between the way the world is, representations of reality, insisting that they and the way we would like it to be—to reflect are not ‘documentaries’, but ‘works of fiction... on the human capacity for self-deception, or on intended to work on the audience’s imagination’. social abuses and evils. The eighteenth-century Rejecting the labels of realist or social realist, writer Horace Walpole once wrote, in a famous he has related his drama to a general impulse, definition, that ‘This world is a comedy to those in modern theatre, away from the conventional that think, a tragedy to those that feel’. Buzo’s means by which naturalism structured its plays also generate this thought-provoking apparently plausible, life-like actions: quality of detachment, forcing us to think about I would like to think that we are moving away the predicaments of his characters, and to ponder from the well-plotted, well-made exposition- the issues which his comic mode of presenting climax-denouement kind of form into a new them raises. His plays do not offer us exact and freer style where the structure of a play reproductions or reflections of our society, but is dictated by the energies of what is being imaginatively heightened images of our social expressed. behaviour, using effects of surprise and shock to Comic techniques and effects are important force us into disturbing recognitions. in the ‘freer style’ Buzo develops in plays like Norm and Ahmed and Rooted. His imagination Norm and Ahmed draws on many traditional comic methods of Norm and Ahmed is a particularly good example of deforming or transforming the real world, and Buzo’s desire to move away from ‘the well-plotted, on recent techniques of the absurd, to produce well-made exposition-climax-denouement his characteristic effects of surprise, humour and kind of form into a new and freer style’. In this shock: exaggeration of speech or behaviour; an one-actor there is no plot, in any conventional emphasis on the character type, rather than on sense, and very little action until the explosive the individual, defined by some mannerism or moment of physical violence on which the play obsession irrationally pursued (Norm and all the concludes. This is not to say that the play lacks characters of Rooted are comic characters in this a structure. Its basic aim is to create suspense sense); and an emphasis, in the structuring of his about Norm’s motivations, to intensify the plays, on comic or bizarre contrasts between one audience’s uneasiness about how the encounter scene or incident and the next, between types between Norm and Ahmed will end—playing of language, and between different characters. on the humour of the situation but increasingly (Simmo and Hammo in Rooted, and Norm and undermining it in a pattern which might best be Ahmed are examples of characters deliberately described as a rhythm of alternately heightened contrasted in this way.) Comedy achieves its and relaxed tensions, as we follow the ebb and effects precisely through its ways of disrupting flow of the emotional undercurrents between the what we might normally expect to happen or to two characters. be said, in a particular situation. Effects of these These transitions of mood and feeling are kinds, throughout Buzo’s plays, are complemented crucial in the developing momentum of the by his interest in introducing unusual visual or play. An atmosphere of uncertainty is created audio-visual images into his plays: the use of right at the beginning—well before anything is Sandy’s voice in the tape-recorder in Rooted, or actually said—simply through the oddness of the odd setting—the scaffolding, white fence and Norm’s behaviour: his restless movements in a wire mesh of the construction site—in Norm and strange setting at an unusual hour (midnight) Ahmed. and, especially, his puzzling action in throwing his We need also to remember, in considering the cigarette away and putting another in his mouth, comic elements in Buzo’s drama, that comedy unlit, as the stranger approaches. There are

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several other moments, spaced throughout the in a documentary, but to create imaginative play prior to its climax, in which significant action patterns in order to emphasise comic or triggers a shift in mood—in each case injecting disturbing contrasts and ironies. uncertainty into the play and intensifying our One of the major ironies in the play, for sense of menacing suspense. For example, as the example, is that Ahmed, the foreigner, speaks initial tensions of the encounter relax, there is from Norm’s point of view in better English a sudden shift (p. 9), when Norm abruptly turns than that of the average Australian: a brand of on Ahmed, re-enacting in fantasy his violent cultivated, literary English which for Norm is a treatment of the German prisoner-of-war. Almost deeply threatening sign of superior education, immediately afterwards Norm offers Ahmed a status and intelligence. Norm’s pause, in the cigarette, apparently as a gesture of apology, following exchange, introduces this kind of lighting it for him with his own cigarette lighter. undercurrent into the play: But this apparently innocent recovery of good AHMED: One always experiences difficulties when humour is a profoundly unsettling moment for one is seeking to adjust to an alien environment. Ahmed, since he becomes aware at this point But once the initial period of adjustment is over, that Norm’s initial reason for stopping him (‘Got it is easier to acclimatise oneself. a light?’, p. 3) was a ruse masking some other [Pause] intention. NORM: That’s very true. (p. 5) Actions like these are all of the simplest kind, Some of the funniest moments in the play are but they demonstrate Buzo’s skill in controlling built on this comedy of misunderstandings, but the pace and rhythm of the play. The physical it also conveys the deeper theme of the crucial attack on Ahmed at the end of the play is thus connection between language and identity. For less ‘arbitrary’, less unpredictable, than it might Norm, Ahmed’s ability to speak educated English initially appear, and it creates an image of race so fluently is a threat to his sense of superior prejudice as a profoundly irrational force in the identity as an Australian. behaviour of ordinary Australians. One of the Another significant level of irony occurs within most disturbing aspects of the play is that Norm Norm’s speech, in its comically disconcerted shifts knows all the ‘arguments’ for racial tolerance. His of register between relatively friendly formality mind is saturated with a liberal-minded rhetoric of and aggressive familiarity. Much of the comedy tolerance, goodwill, neighbourliness and respect of the language resides in Ahmed’s increasingly for the rights of others: baffled uneasiness at these disconcerting shifts. We’re forging the bonds of friendship with our Often they occur within a particular speech, Asian neighbours. Knowledge is the key to the like the following, in which the movement door of understanding and friendship. (p. 11) from friendly formality to vigorously colloquial ... we’ve got to learn to understand the problems language points to a loss of emotional control, of others and not worry too much about our belying the assumption of fair-mindedness with own... In this world there’s too many blokes which it begins: getting in for their chop and not worrying about NORM: It’s nice of you to say that, Ahmed, their mates. (pp. 17-18) because these blokes [Egyptians] were hard to But it is, for Norm, merely a rhetoric, a set of understand. There were faults on both sides, of clichés and slogans masking and rationalising course, and there’s two sides to every question, deep-seated resentments which the play as you well know, but, well, there it is. I just ultimately brings to the surface, as the veneer of didn’t take to them. Might have been my fault. polite or friendly talk gradually disintegrates. You see, they’re a cunning lot, those Gyppos. Take you down as soon as look at you. Some of The play’s dialogue reinforces this image of our blokes were easy pickings for those bastards. underlying hostility and irrationality. Although Fruit on the sideboard. That’s what they were. the various speech registers used in the play are (p. 8) rooted in the actual speech habits of ordinary The image of Norm as an Australian norm—a Australians like Norm, and outsiders like Ahmed, typical Australian who embodies the country’s Buzo’s aim is not simply to reproduce that speech dominant attitudes and myths—is carefully

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constructed throughout. At its centre is the the general insistence that racism like Norm’s belief that all Australians are basically humane, can hardly be reached by conventional appeals to tolerant and freedom-loving (‘We’re not such a reason or decency, and in doing so it challenges bad mob out here, you know. We might be a bit one of Australia’s cherished myths: its toleration on the rough-and-ready side, but our heart’s in of people from different cultures and races. the right place.’ p. 24). However, it also includes Perhaps this larger connotation is symbolically subservience to authority, the belief that hinted at in the play’s unusual setting: offering ‘important people... blokes in an official capacity’ an image of Norm, as the self-appointed guardian deserve a little bit of respect, and Norm lives in of white Australian society, on the look-out for awe of a boss who once condescended to have those (like Ahmed) which the white fence, with its a drink with him. In addition to his love of such prison-like mesh-wire top, is designed to keep out. Australian institutions as sport, Leagues Clubs and Norm and Ahmed also offers considerable the R.S.L., Norm is the stereotype in his domestic scope for varied interpretation in production. attitudes: One of the more interesting questions to be NORM: I’m doing all right for meself. Making a bit of decided would be how far Norm is made to money, got a nice big house, everything laid on, seem an ‘innocent’ character, unaware of the I’m doing fine. (p. 15). contradictions in his behaviour. Greater or less And his sentimental nostalgia for home life and stress might be put on the motive of loneliness, marital bliss is evoked in grotesquely inflated as a reason for Norm’s being out on the streets Hollywood clichés: looking for someone to talk to—or a foreigner NORM: Those magic moments that make life seem to beat up—at midnight. The scene in which worthwhile now I sit at home alone and think of Norm takes out his lighter (according to the yesteryear. (p. 16) stage direction, ‘beamingly benignly’) could I stop and look up at the stars in the sky and be presented, depending on the tone of the think what a wonderful world it is we live in. production, as a deliberately provocative act on (p. 22) Norm’s part, or an unconscious, innocent act, All these attitudes are ironically undermined in in which it is assumed that he has genuinely the course of the play, not least through their forgotten his ruse at the play’s beginning. contrast, as sentimental clichés, with other The latter emphasis would make for a ‘softer’ tendencies in Norm’s speech. There is a sustained production, stressing both the comedy and undercurrent of violence in many of the stories pathos of Norm’s situation. The former emphasis Norm tells, and in the texture and imagery of would require a ‘harder’, more uncompromising much of his slang. Contemptuous racial tags— production, stressing the blackness of the Gyppos, Krauts, Chows and Boongs—are part comedy and the deliberate aggressiveness of of this violent texture. Early in the play Norm Norm’s character. Yet another type of production describes Ahmed as looking ‘as if a kick in the might try a mixture of these Norms, making the crutch and a cold frankfurt’d finish you off’ (p. 6); audience’s uncertainty about Norm’s motivation and he describes his encounter with the German the basic effect aimed at. Each of these Norms prisoner in such terms as ‘knocked one of ’em would require a different Ahmed, also: a more down with me bare hands’, ‘jobbed him one’ and passive figure, presented as an ‘innocent’ victim, ‘floored this bloody Kraut. Really laid him out’ or a more active figure, perhaps ironically (pp. 8-10). goading Norm at certain points in the play. Such Language like this (and there are many other differences of emphasis in production would not examples in the play) reveals how dangerously fundamentally affect the general aim of the play, unstable Norm really is, how close to the surface but they would create a different balancing of the is the impulse to lash out and solve problems with elements of comedy, pathos and shock. the fist, as he does at the end of the play. Rooted Norm and Ahmed does not offer any solution Rooted, even more than Norm and Ahmed, offers to the issues it raises so dramatically. In fact much bizarre images, comic distortions of reality, in of the grimness of the play’s ending comes from

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order to make us think about the situations of such, his influence is shown to pervade every its characters and about the issues which their aspect of their lives. He is the ultimate achiever absurd behaviour raises. Like Norm and Ahmed, in the world of big business, controller of the play lacks a plot in the conventional sense. Simmo Enterprises Ltd, a vast, expanding empire Instead of developing to a climax, in which employing the most sophisticated technology characters are brought to crucial recognitions and the most up-to-date concepts. He is also Mr about themselves and their situations, the Big, the man whose reputation is so notorious structure of Rooted traces an inevitable downward that policemen and lawyers refuse to take action curve in the fortunes of its protagonist, Bentley. against him (p. 73), and an Australian-style John None of the characters (including Bentley) ever Wayne, taking a back-country Australian ‘hick comes to an understanding of his or her situation, town’ by storm: and of the system of values to which they all GARY: He backed five winners at the picnic races, mindlessly conform: floored three locals in a brawl, demolished a GARY: Just assert yourself a bit. Throw your weight niner, and torpedoed the minister’s daughter. around. Remember, in this life it’s up for grabs. (p. 77) You’ve got to go out and get it. (p. 91) In his school days, we learn, Simmo was the bully The social system of the play suggests a medieval who ran the playground (p. 66). And he is also—in wheel of fortune, on which all the characters are this comically inflated composite image of every trapped. Its extremes of absolute social success character’s dream of power and prestige—a and absolute social failure are measured by the sexual athlete of immense prowess, irresistibly two absent characters, Simmo and Hammo. attractive to women. Simmo’s name, which The other characters compete with each other (like the names Hammo and Davo) is meant to for status, power and possessions, and occupy suggest a typically Australian nicknaming habit, varying degrees of ascendancy or decline. The also suggests a pun on ‘simian’, and an ironic gradual humiliation of Bentley—the main action allusion to man’s evolutionary descent from the of the play, in which he is successively stripped ape. Simmo is the winner, the fittest survivor in a of the possessions he has prided himself on society based purely on self-assertion, and on the acquiring (his wife, his home unit with its admired ethic of winner-takes-all. Hammo, on the other consumer goods, his job, his friends)—is balanced hand, whose name suggests the ham-actor—the by the relative success of the others. Yet success out-of-date, bungling, inexpert performer—is is likely to be as transient for these characters as the born loser, the down-and-out that Bentley is it is demonstrated to be for Bentley, in a system destined to become the victim spurned by the which sacrifices intrinsic values and loyalties for system. merely temporary, ego-boosting satisfactions. As a fantasy image shared by all the If Norm and Ahmed challenges the myth that characters, Simmo has a permanence and stability Australia is a tolerant society, Rooted challenges throughout the play which is in comic contrast the equally entrenched myth that in Australia to the actual situations of the other characters. the ethic of competitiveness—competing with These are marked by their continually shifting, others for higher status, more power, a better job, temporary quality, as allegiances shift and more admired possessions—is a natural source of fortunes change in the frantic drive for success. personal freedoms. Buzo draws on many traditional techniques of Simmo and Hammo embody the drive for high and low comedy, as well as on more recent status and the fear of failure in an extreme form. techniques of the absurd, to emphasise the Their absence from the stage (especially that of rootlessness of his characters’ lives, their restless Simmo) is one of the most unconventional of pursuit of temporary gratifications. The steady the play’s absurdist devices. Buzo’s aim, with this decline of Bentley’s fortunes is traced through deliberately non-realistic effect, is to suggest that different phases in the play’s three acts, each of Simmo’s domination is primarily psychological. He which contains an unusual mixture of short and exists primarily, that is, as a powerfully motivating longer scenes: four scenes to each act, including illusion in the minds of the other characters. As a scene without words. The effect of these

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variations is to keep shifting our focus on Bentley tape recorder and transistor) suggest a cold, (and to a lesser extent, on Sandy): to see him, in sterile atmosphere, an obsession with status and the longer scenes, in relationships with others, appearances. Sandy’s introduction of a vivid red and to focus on him, in the scenes without words, abstract painting into this setting (p. 44) suggests as an increasingly isolated figure. A composite the passion which is absent in her relationship portrait of Bentley is thus gradually constructed, with Bentley, and which she seeks in shifting her revealing his social situation and its bearing on his attention to Simmo. personal life. Many of the incidents involving Bentley The mixture of short and long scenes varies offer images of him as comically inept, a clown the pace of the play, giving it something of an bungling even the simplest of actions. His episodic character as it shifts from one scene, inability to keep two tennis balls bouncing on his one moment in Bentley’s experience, to another, racquet (p. 35) is one example. So is the first of within the overall design of a downward curve his ‘scenes without words’, in which he throws in his fortunes. It also enables Buzo to introduce and misses with all five of the quoits he carries farce-like complications into the actions and on stage, while Sandy—dressed in the same relationships of the minor characters. Six liaisons sterile white as he is—silently ignores him as occur (all within a period of ten weeks!), in a she reads a newspaper. This brief, wordless scene shifting pattern typical of the comic action of encapsulates their situation, making its point farce: Sandy-Bentley, Richard-Diane, Simmo- through its direct visual impact. All the scenes Sandy, Gary-Diane, Richard-Sandy, Simmo-Diane. without words, in fact, typify Buzo’s aim for And these relationships are complicated by other a ‘freer style’ of drama, in which the ‘energies rivalries and betrayals: Diane’s jealousy of Sandy; of what is being expressed’ generate their Gary’s and Richard’s friendship and betrayal own theatrical force, without overt authorial of Bentley. The movement of characters into manipulation: a style in which action is allowed to and out of Bentley’s unit (Acts One and Two) generate its own unspoken comment. and Gary’s room (Act Three) also suggests the Other incidental actions and details inserted typically complicated movements of farce. At the into the longer scenes suggest pure farce. beginning of the play Bentley and Sandy occupy The meat pie dangling from the ceiling (Act their unit, and Richard occupies Gary’s room. Three, Scene One) is a ludicrous illustration Subsequently Bentley moves out of the unit and of the pretentious art world to which Richard Simmo moves in; Richard moves out of Gary’s belongs, as editor of an underground magazine room and Bentley moves in; Simmo moves out of with the equally ludicrous title, The Inevitable the unit and Richard moves in; and finally Bentley Tarantula. The third scene of Act Two opens moves out of Gary’s room. with a succession of farcical actions by Bentley: These farcical elements, offering a comic he makes inept attempts to train a hose on the image of transient relationships, are reinforced by lovers through a peephole into their bedroom, the proliferation of comic incidents throughout. then aims an air rifle at them, which starts to The play’s visual imagery—its inventive use ‘move up and down, rhythmically’, comically of stage design and props to illuminate the miming the offstage movements of the lovers in situations of the characters—is particularly bed. These are old circus-clown gags (especially important. No scene in the play is without the water squirting back into the face of the examples of purely theatrical symbolism of this practical joker, Bentley), but they are given a new kind. It ranges from the simplest kind of visual significance here, revealing Bentley’s inability gag—for example, Bentley’s production of a to fulfil the role of a betrayed husband, and bowl of blue punch (p. 36), absurdly matching rendering absurd his sense of outrage. At several the blue armchairs—to the sustained symbolism points in the play, also, the tape-recorder which of the decor and furnishings of Bentley’s unit is Bentley’s most recent and proudest acquisition itself. Its colour scheme of blue and white, and is ironically made to broadcast Sandy’s voice, its ostentatious display of expensive furniture abruptly announcing to him the facts of her and latest-model sound equipment (stereo, bitterness towards him and her infidelity: ‘Why

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don’t you shut up?’ (p. 37); ‘Bin having it off with back on your feet’), or by creating ludicrous visual Simmo.’ (p. 53); and (her final words to him as he images out of them. leaves the unit), ‘Piss off.’ (p. 74). Individual characters are identified by the If farcical action in Rooted both comically meaningless jargon of the circles they move in, of characterises and judges the behaviour it depicts their occupations, or of the books and magazines (in much the same way as a cartoonist offers an they read. Bentley constantly speaks of his exaggerated and simplified image of behaviour personal life and relationships in cant or jargon in order to make some moral comment about phrases absorbed from his job as a Grade Three it), the play’s language continually creates the bureaucrat in the public service, from the world same effects—defining the characters (especially of advertising, and in the later stages of the play, Bentley) as victims of empty clichés, unable to from glossy magazines promising instant success communicate other than superficially with each and instant problem-solving in personal relations. other. As in Norm and Ahmed, it is important to Bureaucratic double-talk provides him with the recognise that although the language used by the ridiculous evasiveness of his answer to a simple characters is rooted in the everyday speech habits question about whether he likes his job: of most Australians, the play does not present BENTLEY: I can’t supply you with an unqualified such speech realistically. At the very beginning of categorical ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer to that particular the play, Buzo builds a comic exchange out of a question. However, I should like to make it series of repetitions, revealing Bentley as a man abundantly clear that I consider the position obsessed with appearances, totally dependent on eminently suitable on a number of counts, but the approval of others (especially Sandy): equally unsuitable on a number of other counts. (p. 48) BENTLEY: You hear that, Sandy? Gary reckons our unit’s immaculate. Psychoanalytic jargon, and the sentimental clichés SANDY: Yes, I heard. marketed by popular women’s magazines like BENTLEY: You hear that, Sandy? Gary reckons it was the Ladies’ Home Journal, provide a pathetically a great turn. inadequate language to explain or cope with SANDY: Yes, I heard. the facts of his personal demoralisation, BENTLEY: You hear that, Sandy? Gary reckons Davo sustaining him in the illusion that he is ‘adopting enjoyed himself. a meaningful stance’ (p. 94) or ‘establishing a SANDY: Yes, I heard. point of reference’ (p. 95), or ‘undergoing some BENTLEY: You hear that, Sandy? reorientation of the underlying factors governing SANDY: Gary reckons we’ve got a great stereo set. my basic attitudes to life, liberty, and the pursuit BENTLEY: Yes, I heard. (p. 30) of happiness’ (p. 80). The exchange finally becomes absurdly mixed up, At other points in the play (especially in its as Sandy deliberately breaks the ritual pattern of earlier scenes) Buzo inserts longish monologues in question and response. This is a typical example which Bentley and Sandy reveal something of the of the way Buzo builds purely imaginative repressed inner world, of real needs and desires, patterns out of speech, comically accentuating which their commitment to stylish social surface mannerisms in order to create witty theatrical has gradually choked and thwarted. Bentley’s images of his characters’ obsessions. monologue at the end of the play’s opening scene Many of the repetitive exchanges in the play (pp. 31-2) contains a typical mixture of delusions present language as an empty social ritual. There about his predicament and genuine solicitation are several exchanges (for example, pp. 53-6 and for his wife. Another, at the beginning of the pp. 69-71) in which Bentley is ritually smothered play’s third scene, reveals a genuine feeling for in clichés by his friends (Diane, Richard, Gary) nature and for values other than the superficial, in what amounts to a mocking chorus. Buzo is which becomes progressively lost in the course of particularly fond of revealing the emptiness of the play. clichés by building them into absurd patterns of The success of a play like Rooted depends mixed metaphors (‘Pull your socks up and have to a great extent on the effectiveness of its a bash’; ‘Chin up and toe the line, you’ll soon be vigorous theatricalism—its unusual structure and

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disposition of scenes, its inventive use of farcical the cast) to represent the collapse of Bentley’s situations and gags, its visual excitements, and its last vestiges of individuality and affection for witty and varied creation of unusual patterns of Sandy. Instead the last scene was a despondent speech—in providing an immediately humorous morning-after-the-night-before which left me and thought-provoking vision of a recognisable feeling cheated of an essential element of the action. world. The world of the play is immediately This Jane Street production gives it a good recognisable as the society, characterised by deal more than a new ending. Rearrangements, increasing affluence and consumerism, into which cutting and lots of new dialogue change the younger Australians grew up in the 1960s. Buzo shape and, to some extent, the intention of the offers a delightfully comic image of that world; whole play. The introduction of a second girl but it is also a satirist’s image, conveying a sharp reduces the Bentley-Sandy relationship while comment on the superficiality of the values on the concentration of attention on the off-stage which it is based. Bentley, the play’s sad clown, super-mate, Simmo, who always wins the fights is its central symbol: the innocent, vociferous and gets the birds, turns the play into a sarcastic defender of its values, and its most complete comment on the nature and power structures victim. of ‘mateship’—the closely personal look at a weak man drowning in his environment has 1. Note in The Australian Performing Group been sacrificed to a rather more conventional programme of The Front Room Boys at the playwriting point of view. 1970 Festival of Perth. The new version is still a very good play. It is 2. All page references are to Three Plays: Norm certainly a neater and more efficient dramatic and Ahmed, Rooted, The Roy Murphy Show, structure... I hope Mr Buzo will not leave it at , 1977. this stage of its development; here are further possibilities, yet to be realised, in the original draft. 2. The critics’ views Katharine , Australian, Griffen Foley, Daily Telegraph, 10 April 1968 Buzo has something real and immediate to 28 November 1970 say about Australian attitudes. He makes the Buzo is at his best in the one-act play pursuing audience uneasy about the unperceptiveness a simple idea to a single conclusion and allowing of an ‘average’ Aussie confronted by a well- himself to play upon the variations of an idea ... mannered, educated Pakistani student. Norm The first thing Norm and Ahmed does is set parades many of the proper, accepted attitudes Australia for the first time in an Asian setting. which... are shot through the fabric of the The second thing is to define with a terrifyingly Australian character. Again Buzo makes us funny accuracy the Australian’s aggressive- uneasy by demonstrating that some of our defensive attitude to life. attitudes are shams. Ted Robinson’s production... is deliberately exaggerated to ensure that nothing of Norm’s Rex Cramphorn, Bulletin, 30 August 1969 one-eyed opinions, uncertain judgements or When I first saw Rooted at a PACT reading it was sentimental expressions is lost to the viewer. about an ineffectual young husband (Bentley) What struck me for the first time, however, was and his errant wife (Sandy) in the context of old a moving sense of alienation in both characters. schoolmates, surf lifesaving clubs, chunder and Ahmed is the alien, frightened by his strange fluff. The plays remarkable originality lay in its element and anxious not to offend; but Norm, it implicit suggestion that language is an exact soon emerges, has spent his whole life in an alien coefficient of life—the characters are shown environment and does not understand it any literally living their banal obscenities and slang better than Ahmed. And he can’t do much about rituals. The observed dialogue is funny, but the it except go out and kick a stranger ... lives involved are still ‘rooted’. So when the Norm and Ahmed is quite an important little second-last scene ended with, ‘What shall we play because of the density of its thought and drink to?’—‘Bugger all’, I expected a last scene language. It is also very funny. of group sexuality (Sandy and the three men in The ending is still not quite right but through John Clayton’s performance Norm shows himself

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as something much more dangerous than the taken from him bit by bit—his home unit, Barry Humphries’ barrel of clichés for which he his wife, his status. The last we see of him is a was taken. borrowed blanket being thrown out the door. It is a very witty play and the audiences Eliot Norton, Record American, Boston, who are packing it are in ecstasies of joy over 26 January 1972 the code language. But there are problems Rooted is a strange free-form farce about a man which neither the Melbourne nor the Sydney doomed to lose, deliriously funny and, at the productions solve and which are leading me same time, deadly serious. To appreciate it fully to the belief that a whole new approach to the would probably require an elaborate glossary treatment of plays like this is needed... of Aussie slang, which seems to be more Buzo has not in this early play solved all the picturesque than Cockney English. To enjoy it problems of style which he has set himself but in its American premiere by the Hartford Stage there is a precision in the rhythm of the writing Company, the playgoer needs no more than which demands a new approach to orchestration. a liberated sense of humour and a passionate Behind the apparently rambling scenes there devotion to all those men of good will and bad is a backbone of formality. For example, there luck who are habitually rooted, or uprooted, or are two almost identical scenes in which booted by the frauds, the phonies, the predators two unexpected guests catch Bentley at a and the perennial winners ... disadvantage. When embarrassment reaches its Rooted is a black comedy, or, to borrow a line height the couple hastily make their departure from another playwright, it is ‘a farce to make incanting over the unfortunate Bentley a liturgy you sad’. It jeers at the optimists of the world, of aphorisms. In the Melbourne production this who, like Bentley, believe in love and friendship, was done formally, in the Sydney production and at the same time, at the smiling cynics and naturalistically. Neither really worked because opportunists who take advantage of them. It the emphasis was placed on the situation rather reduces to a kind of sad pipe dream the belief than the words. that modern man can live by the old golden rule Phrases such as: don’t let it get you down; while lacerating with the whip of Mr Buzo’s wit live it up; have a bash; play it cool; are only the smiling enemies of innocence. approximations of language. We are not used to listening to them. What writers like Buzo and Bob Ellis, Nation Review, 20–26 May 1972 Kenna are doing so well is to make us listen. But I liked the way the play Rooted showed how we we will only listen if the actor shows us how. go through cycles of roles in life (artist, swaggie, advertising man, public servant, cuckold, bum, Thomas Schick, Nation, 10 June 1972 apprentice mogul) but our friends stick with us, Max Phipps stands out with his portrayal of until we actually fail, and then they cast us out. Bentley, the public servant. In his hands the Other people will like it for other reasons. character acquires a sense of vulnerability and There’s a great deal in it, and it has to be the lostness and so gains our sympathy much more best written Australian play I’ve seen. than Buzo’s writing would, in fact, warrant ... Mr Buzo has a knack for the Australian , Australian, 27 May 1972 vernacular, for the trivia of life, for the empty The new production of Rooted raises a number of small-talk between man and man, between men interesting questions. It is a good production... and women. The trouble is that he doesn’t know and tackles in a firmly naturalistic manner head- what to do with this technique. Rooted is a series on, the problems raised by this totally original of emotional and/or satirical vignettes, each style... having precious little to do with its neighbour. At one level we have a complete cartoon The first sequence is the most promising, of the world of the young middle-class Sydney with Bentley, wife and friend discussing the man. On another we have the author’s criticism house-warming party. Sharp dialogue, painfully of it; on still another the familiar persecution recognisable platitudes work for good effect. nightmare which at some time has enveloped all Suddenly the tone changes ... of us. The first half is written purely for laughs, for As punishment for being so boring, cruel laughs at that. Buzo shows no interest in acquisitive and pathetic, Bentley has everything his people, or understanding and compassion for

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them. Granting that some of us live that way, the play idles along as Mr Buzo anthologises, it’s still not enough to show only the superficial through Norm’s compulsion to explain himself layer of existence. For meaningful, constructive (an Australian trait?) the various kinds of art there must be concern and a need to prejudice, incomprehension, self-deception understand. and insecurity which have launched so many In the second half, without bothering to sociological or psychological theses... The play tell us what has caused the change, Bentley is becomes a thesis, the less convincing as drama a drop-out from the rat race. He becomes fully because the stalled and static Ahmed speaks like reliant on his ‘protective’ circle of mates who in a Peter Sellers character. The theatrical outbreak the end discard him and we leave him all alone in of violence at the end has something of the a presumably alien world. While the second half smug finality of QED. is more dramatic in content, with fewer laughs, The play’s strength is in the accuracy of its it has absolutely nothing to do with the first ear for jargon, cliché, platitude and evasion and half. It could well be another play using the same the force of critical implication in the way these people, or the same names. First half, second are patterned to make each point. Norm and half, or the two together, Rooted says very little Ahmed belongs to the theatre if only because, beyond the story line which seems culled from thesis notwithstanding, it becomes in the acting numerous fashionable synopses adapted at so vivid a demonstration of its generalised random for the Australian scene—the marital propositions about behaviour. bickering of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Rooted is Mr Buzo’s best play to date. Here the ambivalent hierarchies of Deathwatch and the targets are Norm’s successor-generation, Fortune and Men’s Eyes, the ‘inspirations’ from indubitably middle class, and the affluent worlds Waiting for Godot, the theatre-of-the-absurd of the fast motor car, the surf club, the avant- touches in the ‘friends’. It’s all there except garde art gallery, the wholesale-retail market compassion and care. place—and brilliantly Mr Buzo cartoons them in Mr Buzo has the technical expertise for a sustained passages in which his ear for jargon writer for the stage. Time will tell whether the reinforces his eye for the conventions and fashionable playwright with the fashionable compulsions of group behaviour. means will turn into a worthwhile one as well. In Rooted the group is all; and it is because his hero, Bentley, the civil servant, with outdated H. G. Kippax, Sydney Morning Herald, and misplaced faith in mateship and the values 10 September 1973 of the old school tie, and in superannuation The Front Room Boys of 1969 is, despite its and the security of his unit and its electronic satirical flights of eloquently patterned dialogue, trappings, can find no acceptance in his chosen an inflated and eventually tedious thesis group with its opportunistic rationale, that he is exercise; and Macquarie of 1971, a departure, systematically destroyed. finds him groping, not very rewardingly, beneath ... it is perhaps because it is a nightmare that the surfaces of social relationships towards the reservations one has about the puppets the mysteries of human temperament and in Norm and Ahmed and other plays seem less motivation. As yet Mr Buzo is too doctrinaire a relevant. True, the destruction of Bentley is social critic to be able to dramatise complexity. schematic, and he himself jerks mechanically, This limitation may explain what is mindlessly and bloodlessly, like any puppet, as unsatisfactory about his first short play, Norm Mr Buzo methodically pulls a string, presses a and Ahmed (1967). Yet it deserves its place in switch, probes a nerve, to show how he thinks it this volume not only because it brought him is. his first success but also because with it he But we don’t look for psychology in The announced, with considerable theatrical bravura, Importance of Being Earnest (where also a ‘world’ the stance from which, with a peculiar blend lives wholly in terms of a language honed as a of detachment and fascination, he sees—or weapon against reality and responsibility) or imagines he sees—his world... in any other fairy story. Rooted is a fairy story, The play is a study in covert aggression, the nastier because its torture rooms vibrate tautly effective in its earlier stretch in suggesting menaces... The menace established,

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with echoes from the more tawdry or predatory overtones. The acting portrayed this invasion of streets of our world of common day. privacy superbly without overstating its case. In the final moments of the play Norm, with Charles Lewsen, The Times, London, no warning or obvious provocation, turns on January 1976 Ahmed. The violence which erupts is horrifying Alexander Buzo’s witty and powerful short play and shocking. One’s first response is to wonder presents an encounter between two men in a where it came from, then instantly we are drawn Sydney park at midnight. With the one overtly back to the clues in Norm’s character and realise aggressive and the other courteous in the face the latent menace was always present, and it of determined provocation, it feels at first like would only be a question of time before it was an Australian Zoo Story. However, while Albee unleashed. cast light on a disturbed fifties New York by Norm and Ahmed has not dated, one only showing an individual forced into violence that need consider the racist overtones of the press is apparently not his nature, Mr Buzo arrives at coverage of the recent ‘Paks’ cricket tour to a study of individual paranoia via a piling up of realise how little things have really changed, stereotypes; and then he shocks us by showing irrespective of the demise of the White Australia his characters behave precisely as we would in Policy. the first place have expected them to do. In an extended piece of shadow boxing, Norm, a veteran of the Second World War, 3. Questions for reveals, by condescension born of fear, his firm support of the White Australia Policy... discussion And Gregory de Polnay delivers a line in praise 1. Buzo has often said that he does not think of Norm’s daughter with enough emphasis to of himself primarily as a playwright with a suggest that the man is the victim of incestuous social message for his audience: ‘I am not longings, and with enough restraint to prevent a social writer in that I’m not just writing this becoming a too easy key to the mystery of about Australia’. What bearing does this view an unhappy personality. have on your understanding of the aims and Darien Angadi plays a Pakistani student who themes of Norm and Ahmed and Rooted? has imposed on himself the task of imbibing a liberal education at Sydney University and 2. Discuss the character of Bentley in Rooted. of abiding the condescending insults of white How far would you agree with any of the Australians—all as preparation for returning to following comments: his own country and there bringing about social ‘The play creates in Bentley a figure of vast revolution. Mr Angadi nicely balances courtesy and wit, so that, to the end, one cannot tell for compassion.’ (Martin Gottfried, Women’s certain whether the young man will end up as Wear Daily, New York, 14 January, 1972) Fidel Castro or Uncle Tom. ‘Alexander Buzo sheds no tears for his unheroic hero... He laughs at the man he calls Suzanne Spunner, Theatre Australia, Bentley.’ (Elliot Norton, Record American, 26 March–April, 1977 January, 1972) Norm and Ahmed was staged in the car park outside La Mama against the tin fence... Cliff ‘Bentley... is a cardboard silhouette of the Ellen managed to make Norm’s most innocuous “little man”... He is rendered weak, silly and question pregnant with imminent aggression contemptible... He does not fight back and so and implicit racism: a sense of foreboding fails to win sympathy.’ (Leslie Rees, A History aggression is built up not merely verbally, in the of Australian Drama, Vol. 2, p. 76) words or the tone in which they are spoken, but 3. Use the following comments as a starting rather in the ambiguous gestures of mateship; point for discussion of the characters in the too-heavy handshake, the too-emphatic slap on the back and the too-insistent staring into Norm and Ahmed: the other’s eyes; the suggestion of questionable ‘What struck me... was a moving sense of intimacy and unconscious homosexual alienation in both characters.’ (Katharine Brisbane, Australian, 28 November 1970) 11 Currency Press S t u d y G u i d e 1 AL E X B U ZO’ S NORM AND AHMED A N D R O O T E D 1 b y T e r r y S t u r m

‘Ahmed... nicely balances courtesy and wit.’ ‘Alexander Buzo Talks to lan Moffit’, Australian, (Charles Lewsen, The Times, January 1976) 6 May, 1974. ‘The Day of the Playwright’, Theatre Quarterly, ‘Norm contains just too many contradictory 7, Summer, 1977. This issue is devoted to elements and pretences and his racial contemporary Australian drama. prejudice, though it might be real enough ‘Organised Niceness’, Kirsten Blanch talks to Alex in particular Australians... is too southern Buzo, Theatre Australia, June, 1978. American for a portrait that aspires to be strongly representative of the club-going, On Alex Buzo sports-loving older Australian working man.’ Arnold, Roslyn, ‘Aggressive Vernacular: Williamson, (Keith Thomas, Nation, 27 April 1968) Buzo and the Australian Tradition’, Southerly 4. Discuss the language of Buzo’s plays. How 35, 4, 1975. important is language as a theme in Norm Bladwell, Frank (ed.), ‘Standards of Decency’ and Ahmed and Rooted? In what ways does (an account of the charges of obscenity Buzo identify characters by their manner of against Norm and Ahmed in 1969); and R. D. speaking? What sorts of imaginative patterns Eagleson, ‘Dramatic Language’; in Norm and does he make out of his characters’ language, Ahmed (Buzo) and The Woman Tamer (Esson), and what kinds of humour? How important Currency Double Bill series, Sydney 1976. is the ‘Australian’ content of the characters’ Fitzpatrick, Peter, After ‘The Doll’: Australian speech? Drama Since 1955, Melbourne, 1979. 5. Identify the comic elements in the plays, as Holloway, Peter (ed.), Contemporary Australian you see them. What is their purpose? Drama: Perspectives Since 1955, Sydney, 1980. This book includes reprints of the articles 6. Is the ending of Norm and Ahmed effective? by Roslyn Arnold, Terry Sturm and Margaret How does the play achieve its dramatic force, Williams’ ‘Mask and Cage’ listed here. as something more than a conversation Rees, Leslie, A History of Australian Drama. 2 piece? How important is movement and Vols., Sydney, 1978. An appendix to Vol. 2, gesture in the play? How important is the ‘Norm and Ahmed, the Police and the Courts’, setting, and the lighting? outlines the history of prosecutions for obscenity in 1969, arising from the play’s final 4. Further reading words. Sturm, Terry, ‘Alexander Buzo: An Imagist With a Other published plays by Personal Style of Surrealism’, Southerly 35, 4, Alex Buzo 1975. The Front Room Boys, in Four Australian Plays, Williams, Margaret, Drama, Australian Writers and Melbourne, 1970. their Work, Melbourne, 1977. Macquarie, Sydney, 1971. Williams, Margaret, ‘Snakes and Ladders: New Coralie Lansdowne Says No, Sydney, 1974. Australian Drama’, Meanjin 31, June 1972; Tom, Sydney, 1975. ‘Mask and Cage: Stereotype in Recent Drama’, Martello Towers, Sydney, 1976. Meanjin 31, September, 1972; ‘Australian Makassar Reef, Sydney, 1978. Drama—A Postscript: Some Comments on Recent Criticism’, Meanjin, 31 December, Articles and interviews by 1972. Alex Buzo Reviews of productions of Norm and Ahmed and ‘Buzo: One Step Further’, interview with Richard Rooted are listed in the Annual Bibliography Zachariah, Sunday Australian, 4 June, 1972. of Australian Literature, Australian Literary ‘From Comic Strip to Comparison With Brecht’, Studies, from 1971 onwards. interview with Virginia Duigan, National Times, 29 January–3 February, 1973.

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