The return of The King: Don’t Look Away’s The Legend of King O’Malley

The ‘legend’ of King O’Malley is as colourful as the man himself, and a cursory look over his Wikipedia entry will only confirm this. Born in the United States (or Canada) in 1854, O’Malley was educated in New York City, founded a church in Texas, and contracted tuberculosis before sailing to Queensland in 1888. Once recovered from his illness, he walked the 2100 kilometres to Adelaide, and eventually became a member of the first parliament of a newly-federated Australia, voted against the introduction of conscription in World War I, was instrumental in the creation of Canberra and the Commonwealth Bank and, when he died aged 99 in 1953, he was the last surviving member of the first parliament.

In 1970, Michael Boddy and Bob Ellis wrote – or perhaps devised – The Legend of King O’Malley under the direction of John Bell for NIDA. A burlesquing Faustian story, full of pantomime, vaudeville, revivalist preaching, Australian politics and music-hall turns, O’Malley is a rambunctious beast that refuses to sit still, rampages about the stage with its uncontainable verve and showmanship. A kind of predecessor to Casey Bennetto’s hit musical Keating!, O’Malley is here produced by Melbourne company Don’t Look Away at the Seymour Centre’s Reginald theatre, and is a sharp, irreverent and timely examination of the larger than life characters we seem to attract in Australian politics.

Don’t shoot the messenger: subtlenuance’s Joan, Again

Many years ago, I discovered the story of Joan of Arc in the school library and was struck by the innocence and the passion, the overwhelming sense of conviction (in every sense of the word) that lay at the heart of her story. While I was later to rediscover her in Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan (very much the ‘definitive’ portrait), Paul Gilchrist’s Joan, Again – playing at the Old Fitz Theatre – gives us a new imagining of The Maid of Orléans, a more mercurial, personal and contemporary Joan than we have met before.

As its title suggests, Joan, Again is not the story of the girl who became the legend. Set in 1441, ten years after Joan was burnt at the stake, it is a play about truths and lies, stories and legends, identity, fame and Being. While a historical drama in the loosest sense of the term – that is, being a drama that is based in historical events – it never purports to be history, and should not be mistaken for such; rather, it is a clever, smart and enchanting play that asks us if we are truly who we say we are, if we can believe everything we see or hear, and whether in the end we are all just stories to be told to other people.