Two Plays: Up For Grabs, Corporate Vibes

By David Williamson, Currency Press: 2001, , 129 pages, paperback, $22.95. Reviewed by Donald Pulford in the July 2002 issue.

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A year after opening at the Sydney Opera House in 2001, Up For Grabs hit London's West End with Madonna in the lead. Her character is Simone, an art dealer informally auctioning a Brett Whitely, whose clients present permutations of lust, greed and self-aggrandisement, foibles that have long fuelled comedy.

All the characters are damaged. The dangers of overweening ambition are physically represented in Kel, a dotcom millionaire whose penis extension went horribly wrong and who now has a 'dick like a giant donut' curling up towards his navel. The settlement from the resulting law suit provided 'the small fortune' that he and his wife turned into a large one. The other male client, Manny, is also sexually dysfunctional. Though loudly homophobic, even about his gay son, his sexual proclivity is to have himself anally penetrated by women wearing a dildo.

The shortcomings of the female clients are less picturesque. Mindy, Kel's wife, is the co-founder of their business, 'Damage Control', through which people order gifts to repair their unravelling relationships. Ironically, her own relationship with Kel is in grave need of repair. Tired of an existence centred on business, she wants 'a life that doesn't involve twenty hours a day taking perfume orders from the panic stricken'. Felicity, Manny's wife, is also a victim of ennui. Trapped in an unsatisfactory marriage, she realises that her husband's money has brought her friends and influence and is unable to give them up, even though professing herself 'tired of doing everything I can to make my friends sick with envy'. Dawn Grey, the final bidder, is an unfulfilled artist who became a curator and then an art advisor to big business. She drinks because 'I can't stand myself when I'm sober'.

The narrative drive is provided by Simone's desperation to sell the painting and the ups and downs of the bidding. As soon as the painting is sold, it is time for the healing of relationships. In her final soliloquy, Simone begins the list of things she has learnt from the experience in this way: 'What had I learned after all that? That I'd been very lucky in my choice of partner. That when I did have children he'd be their Dad'.

While the play may seem to be a slick comedy concerning materialism and self-interest, the ending suggests that it is actually about things that drive people apart and things that put them back together again. Williamson's characters are a cluster of Humpty Dumptys who fall off the flimsy walls they have built for themselves and reconstitute when they learn to love one another better. In Up For Grabs, relationships to the painting, or art more generally, are emblematic of the health of particular characters and their relationships. The least healthy and happy characters in the play are those who most strongly commodify the painting and exploit each other.

Mammon meets a gentle muse in Corporate Vibes as well. The setting is a real estate development business chaired by Sam, a bully who believes that 'Feelings have got nothing to do with business! You either perform or you don't perform'. His firm is in danger of losing its profit share to a competitor and he is looking to remedy the situation by culling staff. Pitted against him is the Human Resources Officer, Deborah. Believing that people work best in a nurturing environment, she has had written into her contract that no-one can be sacked without her approval. She advises frazzled employees to 'Listen for your song'. Deborah tautologically voices the situation's philosophical foundation:

If human nature is all about ego and power, like Thomas Hobbes told us it was, then yeah, everything's futile. But if Adam Smith was right and we do share a fellow feeling with others, then maybe even Sam might eventually realise that we're actually trying to help.

Citation

• Donald Pulford. 'Review: Two Plays: Up For Grabs, Corporate Vibes by David Williamson' [online]. Network Review of Books (Perth, Australian Public Intellectual Network), July 2002. Availability: <please cite the web address here> ISSN 1833-0932. [accessed 18 June 2013].

Back Cover Blurb

• Art dealers: parasites or prophets? Simone Allen would prefer to see herself as the latter, but when she is given the opportunity of her career, a chance to sell one of the better Whiteleys, her behaviour becomes less than angelic as the pressure mounts. Driven sometimes by greed, sometimes by aesthetics, Williamson's characters discover how far they will go when more than just a beautiful work of art is Up for Grabs in this sexy comedy of manners.
  
  Sam, the victim of Corporate Vibes, is a real estate developer, a self-made man who gets his way by shouting. When his staff mutiny, he finds himself confronted by a softly-spoken mediator and a demand for buildings which 'delight the eye' - the stage is set for a vintage farce.

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• Genius of Place: the Life and Art of Kathleen Petyarre
  
  Christine Nicholls and Ian North, Wakefield Press: 2001, , 96 Pages, Hardback, $45.00
  Reviewed by Dean Chan in the June 2002 issue.
  
  Genius of Place is an important publication that deserves careful study. It is generously illustrated with over sixty colour and black and white plates, and features two essays written by Christine Nicholls and Ian North. The essays function (inadvertently or otherwise) as case studies in cross-cultural engagement and commentary. Both essays are self-consciously framed by the subject positions of the non-indigenous essayists, who attempt to negotiate the ethics of cultural engagement -- and who, in my view, succeed in engaging with the attendant issues to varying degrees. Christine Nicholls begins with an assertion about the 'inseparability of Kathleen's art from her life' (6), but her ... read more.