Classic Anzac play heads to Drysdale
A PLAY that has stood the test of time will come to Drysdale’s Potato Shed in time for the centenary of Anzac Day.
The One Day of the Year, written by Alan Seymour in 1958, has always been an important play on the Australian theatre landscape, dealing with our national obsession with the Anzac legend.
The director of this production, Denis Moore, described it as a classic.
“Alan Seymour’s The One Day of the Year stands with Ray Lawler’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll as a landmark work of the late 1950s”, he said.
“To revive this great play in the context of the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli landing is entirely appropriate and will, I’m sure, secure strong houses and induce in audiences a mood of thoughtful celebration.”
Now, with a resurgence of patriotic interest in Anzac Day, the play is given new meaning, but at the time Seymour wrote it, there was a questioning by young adults about the meaning of war and of this country’s involvement in it.
But it is also a story of family relationships, with Anzac Day the catalyst exposing tensions underlying the relationship between father and son. There are also issues of social inequalities that make this compelling theatre.
Seymour was inspired by a story in a student newspaper and his own experience of seeing the drunkenness that accompanied Anzac Days in the late 1950s.
His portrayal of that was controversial with the play banned from the Adelaide Festival in 1960, and at its first professional staging it attracted further furore with the actors barred from the Sydney theatre because of bomb threats.
As time passed, the play became a standard on the English text lists of many schools with Arts Portfolio holder, Cr Andy Richards, calling it “a highlight of my high school education’’.
“It’s such an honest exploration of the Anzac legacy and over 50 years later is still as relevant and thought provoking,” he said.
HIT Productions brings The One Day of the Year, starring Don Bridges ( Romper Stomper and Charlotte’s Web) to the Potato Shed on March 6-7. Tickets are $36. Book on 5251 1998.