The Puzzle: High-seas shenanigans with David Williamson
Ahead of the Adelaide premiere of his new play about ‘sex, secrecy and second chances’, playwright David Williamson and cast member Ansuya Nathan speak to InReview about comedy, cruises, middle-class foibles and upside-down pineapples.
David Williamson first came across “lifestyle cruises” when he was doing online research while planning for a cruise holiday with his writer wife Kristin.
The term kept popping up during his searches, and although the celebrated Australian playwright hastens to add that the cruise they booked wasn’t that type of adventure, it nonetheless provided the idea for The Puzzle, his new black comedy about “marriage, desire, polyamory and parenthood”.
“We went on this cruise and it was rougher than expected, and when they can’t pull into a port they have extra days at sea and the people have to work out what the hell they’re going to do,” he explains to InReview.
Many head to the games room to play cards or gather around a large jigsaw puzzle that everyone helps complete.
“So you get to meet these people from various walks of life and I just thought wouldn’t it be interesting if around that table came together people that shouldn’t come together, which is the essence of drama – you put people in a room that should never be in a room together and things happen.”
The things that can happen inevitably get more interesting on a so-called lifestyle cruise – which, in case you’re still thinking “lifestyle” just means good-clean fun in the sun on the high seas, is actually a euphemism for a swingers’ cruise. As actress Ansuya Nathan says: “It’s kind of like taking the old car key bowl to the high seas.”
In The Puzzle, set to have its world premiere in a State Theatre Company South Australia production opening on September 20, Nathan plays Mandy, who is talked into going on a lifestyle cruise by her husband Craig (Nathan O’Keefe). Also on board are another successful-but-bored married couple, Brian (Chris Asimos) and Michele (Anna Lindner), along with the rather more conservative Drew (Erik Thomson), who mistakenly thinks he is on a Mediterranean cultural cruise with his 20-something free-spirited daughter Cassie (Ahunim Abebe).
David Williamson.
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“Of course everything that can go wrong does go wrong, and poor old Erik Thomson’s character finds himself right in the middle of it…” says Williamson, laughing.
He adds that it’s a comedy about how lives are continually disrupted, “and how infidelity and boredom can become the basis of human comedy and tragedy”.
Since their first holiday at sea, David and Kristin have been on a number of cruises and he says anyone else who has been on one will gasp when they see Ailsa Paterson’s set design for The Puzzle because it captures so well the over-the-top, extravagant décor of luxury cruise ships.
The premiere of the play in the Adelaide Festival Centre’s Dunstan Playhouse has special resonance for Williamson, who was commissioned by State Theatre Company SA to write his 1974 play The Department for the opening of the same theatre, then known as The Playhouse, 50 years ago.
The 82-year-old playwright, who lives on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, says that production (directed by Rodney Fisher) was one of the highlights of his career and he is thrilled to be returning to Adelaide and the Dunstan.
Such a return had seemed unlikely after Williamson announced his retirement almost a decade ago due to the heart condition cardiac arrhythmia. However, the writer of more than 50 plays including Don’s Party, The Removalists and Brilliant Lies, is back at work with renewed energy and enthusiasm that has already seen another new play, The Great Divide, premiere this year at Sydney’s Ensemble Theatre.
He explains that his heart problem is under control with drugs and he feels much better.
“And I do keep getting ideas that I want to explore and it’s very gratifying to know that people still want to come to my plays. Next year I’ve got four major productions coming up, which has surprised me, but I’m delighted.”
Williamson comments that as a person gets older, they get “more wry about the deficiencies of the human condition”. As a result, they also become more forgiving.
“I think my early plays were more savage and satirical, so maybe I’ve mellowed a bit,” he muses, adding that while this might irritate some people, audiences perhaps like plays better when the script isn’t telling them they’re despicable.
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Director of The Puzzle Shannon Rush, who most recently directed State Theatre’s adaptation of Anna Goldsworthy’s memoir Welcome to Your New Life, says Williamson’s latest play is “as sharp, funny and insightful as his most defining plays from the past five decades”.
Ansuya Nathan, who is a writer as well as an actor, agrees, telling InReview the cast is having a ball in rehearsals.
“I think comedy is one of the hardest things to write… so much of it is down to syntax and word choice. And we’re just finding it on the floor; it’s all there, it’s all on the page, and if we just listen to the rhythms David has put on the page it does most of the work for you. It’s wonderful; it’s a real joy as an actor.”
Ansuya Nathan with on-stage husband Nathan O’Keefe: ‘He’s so committed to the comedy of it all that it just can’t help but be funny and fun’. Photo: Bri Hammond
Adelaide-born Nathan – whose screen credits include TV series Aftertaste and the movie Hotel Mumbai – is now based in Los Angeles with her family, but returned home for a couple of years during the pandemic when she was part of the cast of State Theatre’s Hibernation and also took part in SBS’s Emerging Writers’ Incubator doing a placement with local company Closer Productions. She says it’s wonderful to be back again, “to see family and friends and work on something joyous”.
Nathan says Mandy, her character in The Puzzle, is a somewhat reluctant participant in the lifestyle cruise.
“Craig [her husband] has pitched it very well to her… and she kind of gets swept up in the idea. They’ve been married for 25 years so things, as he says, have gone off the boil so there is an attempt to rekindle romance and reawaken her sexuality but what she realises is that they are turned on by different things…
“Hilarity ensures from their mismatched wants and needs, and they meet another lovely couple who are also slightly mismatched in what they desire out of the cruise.”
Then, she adds, there’s Erik Thomson’s character Drew… “he gets quite a rude awakening when his 27-year-old daughter [who she describes as ‘a breath of fresh air’] has to explain to him where he is and what’s actually going on behind the closed doors with the upside down pineapples!”.
State Theatre Company has describe The Puzzle as “The White Lotus meets Triangle of Sadness meets Don’s Party”.
In a nice touch of serendipity, the first play Nathan performed in as a student at NIDA was Don’s Party. She played the role of Kerry, who is flamboyant and open about her sexuality.
“It’s almost like Mandy is the 40-plus-year-old version of her who has kind of got a bit comfortable in her life… who has let the more adventurous side of herself slip away.”
Nathan, whose own current writing projects include a horror film penned with her husband and a book set in Adelaide based on her parents’ story, admires the way Williamson uses different characters and circumstances to examine “who we are and our weaknesses and our strengths”.
“What David does so well is hold up a mirror to middle-class foibles and what’s at the heart of it all – our insecurities as we hit middle age; the way we try to find excitement in our middle-class lives when everything on the surface is great… there are lots of questions,” she says of The Puzzle.
“Each character has a different relationship to sex and sexuality – and of course they’re quite opinionated!”
The Puzzle will play at the Dunstan Playhouse from September 20 until October 12.