Despite him holding the title of Australia’s sole Nobel Prize-winning author, it’s doubtful many people read Patrick White for pleasure these days. He’s so very… literary, and significant to Australian letters though he may be, it’s hard to imagine anyone lying about in a patch of sunny parkland reading The Vivisector with glee abandon. Mind you, glee abandon sounds rather unwholesome in the first place. No, the bulk of people will be exposed to White on a university reading list – or in the comic grotesquerie of The Ham Funeral. Director Kate Gaul talks us through this perennially engaging theatre classic.
“I think what surprises me is how humorous the play is,” Gaul says, stepping out from rehearsal. “It does come with a slight literary pretension, perhaps, or it feels like it might be quite difficult to understand. All of those things certainly were in my mind at the beginning, but the amount of humour here!
“It’s also really clear to me that Patrick White loves his characters. It’s very clear that he has a great fondness for people of all strata of society here, even when they’re quite fantastic. That has been quite a nice discovery. I think I always had it in my mind that he was a little hard on less-educated people, but it’s quite the reverse. The characters are given such insights into life, which of course is very apt given that the primary story is a young man’s search for his lust for life.
“The other thing that surprised me is how flexible it is stylistically. I knew that it wasn’t a tragedy or comedy or naturalism, it wasn’t one thing or the other. It has a very confident hand in the way that it switches styles, which suggests someone who was much more in command of his theatrical instrument, even though he wasn’t really a playwright at that stage. It’s very challenging for us, but we’re loving the chance to rise to it.”
It’s a real mixture of styles, but it certainly isn’t old-fashioned.
The Ham Funeral conjures a rather seedy scene. A story of lust and squalor, death and art, it tracks a young poet who finds himself in a boarding house run by the greasy Mr. and Mrs. Lusty. Something of a comedy, something of a grim and gothic tragedy, it depicts a world few of us would willingly seek out – and yet as audiences, we seemingly can’t get enough of loathsome characters and festering grandeur. Clearly, we’re all not-so-closeted degenerates at heart.
“It’s because it seems romantic!” Gaul laughs. “It feels like you have licence to be more brutal, more passionate than perhaps our everyday existence is. It’s the allure of the other, and even when characters are from a more seedy background, there’s something enticing for the majority of us who are middle-class and probably very safe. It’s a world we might have brushed against in our university days.
“The central character is a young poet trying to find his voice, and he reminds me of a lot of people I knew at university. And that’s kind of funny! He’s not written as a perfect character, and I think that’s part of White’s genius. He sees this young man’s flaws, and quite clearly this young man is a version of himself. It’s quite a fascinating and brave portrayal in lots of ways, because he’s quite an ugly and brutal character in his artistic quest. He’s a real dickhead.”
Nor should this genius be at all off-putting. Certainly, White’s novels aren’t for everyone – they don’t exactly make for light afternoon reading – but his tone and themes are universal.
“He does seem like academic property now, he hasn’t really made it into the mainstream,” says Gaul. “I think it’s because we think it’s too proper, we might not understand it. Or we’re fearful that we don’t know enough to get it. I must say, I thought that too. But The Ham Funeral is a piece of theatre, and at the end of the day it’s a bunch of people onstage sweating, telling a story about something that’s important. I don’t think people should be frightened of this.”
I happen to have caught a production of The Ham Funeral some years ago, and although that particular instance was a rather uneven show, what certainly stood out to me was how well the language has managed to retain its allure. For a play written in 1948 (that was famously and somewhat controversially rejected by the Adelaide Festival), no real cracks have appeared across the dialogue; nor is it a piece we can only charitably appreciate as being ‘of its time’.
“I’m surprised it’s not done more often,” Gaul says. “Some of it is done in heightened language, so that is unusual in a contemporary play. Obviously you have to have a facility for heightened language, or at least understand that it’s different to normal chit-chat. It’s a real mixture of styles, but it certainly isn’t old-fashioned. He writes in an Australian vernacular, and I think on the page, people might think, ‘Well, nobody talks like that now.’ But actually, it’s not too far from the way we talk! At its best, it expresses sentiments that are still very much held.
“I think audiences will totally connect with these characters, even when they are heightened, when they are very theatrical. I think at the core, he expresses something quintessentially Australian. He’s made from the same dust we are.”
The Ham Funeral plays at SBW Stables Theatre from Wednesday May 17 – Saturday June 10.
