The Operator

[Contains mild spoilers]
Last night I braved the cyclone conditions upon us here in Brisvegas to see a David Williamson play for the first time: The Operator which is on at La Boite. It was fun being in a theatre again. In another life I studied drama (and won a university prize for an essay on Michael Gow’s Away, also on this season) and regularly sneaked in to Theatresports in Hobart. This was a raging scene of debauchery and partying for an underage college student keen to meet interesting and attractive talents 10 years older, but not necessarily wiser, than the indie rock stars. I loved every minute of it, and noted from the elaborately dressed young ladies attending last night that the tradition doesn’t seem to have been confined to the 90s, or Hobart.

So Williamson, as far as I know, has something of a bad reptuation among people like me - white, feminist, grad school educated twenty somethings. This was only confirmed when I ran in to the mother of a friend from Sydney beforehand, who was surprised to see me because she didn’t think young people went to Williamson plays. He is the most popular playwright in Australia, though, so why not go and have a look, I thought. And the play is about workplace culture, my new academic interest.

As it turns out, a key character in the play is Melissa (!), an earnest and overly conscientious wannabe career girl with a bookish naivete unsuited to her job (!!). She’s shy and awkward around people at work, she has no street smarts whatsoever. She wants people to be nice to each other (!!!), and she’s so trusting that she risks getting hoodwinked by cynical types - namely, ‘the operator’ on his way to the top. Needless to say I found all of this fascinating, that is, until Melissa ended up admitting to a crush on her boss, which seemed a pretty bland resolution for a promising character. Anyway. Apart from the weird personal connection, there were a number of other topical moments when I felt the play could have been written with the current AWB scandal in mind, let alone Enron, or the stats on sociopaths in the workplace which apparently provided Williamson’s motivation. I think that’s only one of the more obvious neuroses we could begin to talk about.

The audience at our session was completely engaged and involved, particularly towards the end when they could not help but yell out at characters, so invested were they in what was happening (one audience member remarked that the main character was the epitome of Peter Beattie, which was pretty amusing). I found the amount of interaction odd for The Theatre (it reminded me of when people talk back at the movies: do people forget they’re not in their loungeroom? or is it just a sign of good entertainment that people would be so invested?), but further evidence, if it was necessary, that this guy is a gifted writer. While I agree that it was formulaic, and that there’s nothing wrong with that per se, what I did find disappointing was the lingering premise of the play, which I still remain pretty unconvinced by. ‘The Operator’ isn’t given any personality or depth. He simply embodies the evils of corrupt corporate culture and scumbaggery. While this might be entertaining, it’s hardly ascerbic commentary, because it’s not interested in the wider structures contributing to the normalisation of the kind of behaviour being depicted. For a start: hypermasculinity, growing mutual suspicion between employer/employee, social isolation and the financial rewards for egotism. It allows the audience to go on thinking that the world is made up of good guys and bad guys, and that none of us on the good side need to feel implicated by the actions of the ‘bad apples’.

I should note that this has a personal dimension for me. An old family friend was involved in the trading scandal at NAB a few years ago, and I guess I have to believe that there is a social and cultural dimension to what happened to him. Leaving the character of The Operator as a caricature, merely a dramatic device much like the CEO’s niece’s lesbianism (sigh), we lose any chance of understanding how particular personalities, and safe cliches, come about. The corporate culture criticised by the play is as much the result of normalised group behaviour in extremely closed circles than it is a case of evil individuals. This is the irony. Williamson is known for being suspicious of cultural studies and other versions of cultural theory and politics for precisely these reasons - that it’s group think, of the politically correct kind. Both are damaging, that’s for sure. But in the Manichean world of this play, we are only left to congratulate ourselves for condemning the dark side, instead of seeking to change what separates us in the first place.

Edit: Here’s Williamson answering my charge of privileging entertainment over intellectual depth, and writing with a bit more resolve recently about the broader social conditions of the play.