I again invite Kristin Williamson to name a play by David better than Shakespeare In Italy or travel south and see it and review it in these pages or elsewhere.
If she will not, I invite her to start giving back some of the money the Williamson Brand Name gazumped from fifty-seven better playwrights, in a Fellowship or Scholarship or funded theatre, and do it soon.
For some of us are dying, and some of us are dead, and she and her longsuffering scribbler David have delighted us long enough, I think, and should gracefully vacate the stagep and leave it to their betters.
Or perhaps you disagree.
Name:
Three things Bob,
I read you piece “What I know about women” this morning in the Sunday Age, “dogs are better people than men”, superb.
Why do you address Kristin and not David Williamson?
Will I receive a receipt for the $IK for SII or a copy of the prospectus?
I do not recall having written that, having been for five weeks diverted by my War On Shakespeare, lately won.
I address Kristin because she is the auteur of the Williamson Project and David the mere craven scribbler.
My wife will send you, within the day, all that you ask about Shakespeare In Italy and your investment in it.
Let’s do lunch.
Why not fly over and see the show?
I tried, but customers got in the way, and this week is a trade exhibition this year in Melbourne, normally it’s held in SA do you believe it?
I will fly in for the BAFTA’s.
Your photo in the supplement was typical, although I think you should smile, at 70 you should be happy you have got this far, especially if your wife saved your life.
Still waiting for somebody to contact me by email about possible investment. Third request.
Coming.
Mr Ellis, I counsel caution when making the sort of challenge contained in your first sentence.
I’ve found such brinkmanship to be…necessarily reckless.
Sorry, typo:
Should read,
“unnecessarily reckless”
Prospectus-WHERE IS MY MONEY,WHERE IS MY MONEY. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY MONEY.
Have you got a lazy grand Fedallah. I feel a play coming on.
Thank you so much
Bob, if you wrote the lines to respond to Paul Kelly this morning than huzzah! If not, she is clearly reading these pages. The line “then what are we talking about” mirrored yours on many subjects.
I must admit Kelly is easily taken aback and sensitive to insinuations of the Murdoch partisanship.
If you are talking about the Gillard/Kelly exchange, nah, Bob couldn’t have written it. Maybe he knows the politeness of Paul Kelly (and her certainly knows all the gen on the modern ALP) but he would never have taken the risk of asking “do you have an allegation to make?”
It could have led to both barrels going off.
Wait a minute. Bob does not give Gillard any high place amongst his ‘favourite’ ALP politicians. That trap might just have been set by him.
All the best people read these pages, kj.
Bob, now that you have reached your three score and ten perhaps you should vacate the stage and make room for bright creative young talent? Have you considered that?
And starve, you mean. And starve my grandson.
Why would I do that?
Give me three reasons.
You are asking me to ‘consider’ physical suicide.
Why are you doing that?
Do you think Shakespeare In Italy worthless because I and its subject are over thirty-five?
Why do you say that?
Please answer this.
You have twenty-four hours, after which if you are silent I will ban you for life.
Is the Adelaide production putting bread on your table? Or is it drawing from your savings? If the latter, perhaps the audience is telling you it is time to leave the stage to make room for younger and better writers. Audiences do seem to be willing to line up to see Williamson.
Has there been a published review? I’d be interested to see what the critics say.
And what has your grandchild got to do with this?
Many, many published reviews, some reprinted below, all reproduced in extract. One, in ThebAdelaide Adbertiser, called it ‘the most imoortant artistic event n Adelaide in fifty years’.
It is being variously estimated that itbwill make at the box iffice ten, twenty or a hundred million dollars world wide.
And you say itbwill starve my family and Williamson is better. Not even Kristin says Williamson is better.
Having breached the rule and judged a thing you have not seen, you are niw banned for life.
Get out of my sight.
I found this site after seeing your excellent Shakespear play but confess to confusion about this tiff with David Williamson.
You are both gifted wordsmiths and outstanding playwrites, so why the schoolyard antics? And yes, you both have penned the occassional dud too, so is this personal or professional, it is unclear the the Pleb.
I’m certain neither of you are starved or will die from a poor review; you both are equal on the stage of great Australian writers, so why not call it even; a draw, a draw, my Kingdom for a draw?
Williamson has made millions he refuses to give back in any jot or tittle to the fifty-seven better Australian playwrights his bad plays, and his good ones in repeated revival, excluded from the stage, and the glory and money they deserved.
Nothing Personal was put on, and Shakespeare In Italy rejected, by the Ensemble; discuss.
NP was one of the worst, and SII one of the best, plays written in four hundred years. Discuss.
Please stop obsessing about the Williamsons. It only strengthens them.
So I should forget about their daylight robbery, their hijacking, their dumbing-down of the Australian theatre, should I? And their refusal to give anyone else a leg up with the tens of millions they have currently secreted, earning interest?
“currently secreted”
Now that sounds interesting. A One Percenter?
Pleb and Milton, agree with you both. Best is to ignore them.
Anyhow Bob,you write better than the Williamsons…they just might be more popular and therefore make more money.
Patrick White is not much liked by Aussies, but revered in Europe, Russia and South America.
It seems a little odd that none of your considerable rage on this matter is directed towards the theatre managements who programme Williamson’s work.
Read the many columns in which I said it wasn’t David’s fault but the lazy managements. The Williamson Inertia I called it.
Polybius
Although I abhor free market ideology, it strikes me that your comment goes to the crux of this debate/dispute, what have you.
Williamson’s plays, like Ellis’, are popular and generally make a profit, or one suspects break even. I have not seen data, but I imagine Williamson is, to use a Hollywood-ism, ‘bankable’ and that his why his plays are staged.
Bob Ellis too is a name and I and many others will go to see anything that carries his tag.
Williamson is not merely bankable; for years theatre managements have relied on programming one of his plays every year and reaping the benefit of full-houses. Williamson, by virtue of his popularity allows theatres to take risks with other material because they can rely on the income generated by his work.
Whether you care for his particular brand of playwrighting or not, (personally I am not a fan), I think these facts have to be admitted.
Polybius, you and Pleb may discuss all you like, but the simple fact of the matter is that David Williamson is too tall to be a good Playwright, at Six foot Seven, he even towered over Harold Pinter, no slouch in the tallness rankings himself.
Consider how difficult it must be to be an accurate observer of the human condition when you are continually walking around as if on stilts. How can you eavesdrop without obviously stooping, what strains must you feel when entering a room, consistently ducking from or banging your head against a door jamb, or a low slung light fitting. Williamson could have been great, it is his last five inches that has unfortunately diminished him.
This really won’t do, allthumbs.
It’s on a par with the assertion you have made in other online fora that Mr Ellis is “…too round to be a good playwright.”
I note that you’ve not yet had the face to peddle your allegations here.
You’re gibes about Mr Ellis becoming wedged in doorways and so on were tasteless, unnecessary and possibly deranged.
I hope you haven’t been experimenting with mushrooms again.
I very sincerely hope that we’re not going to see a reprise of the notorious “Alpaca Incident” of ’92.
I thought we had agreed not to mention “Alpaca”, it has many sad associations that I have long buried and of which I do not wish to be reminded again.
It is well documented that the perfect height for a dramatist is Five Feet Eleven inches, which Kit Marlowe was able to achieve with “lifts”, in a very soft pair of suede moccassins, and Jonson who was able to make the last chopin with his penchant for rather course woolen stockings and his pair of lucky walnuts.
No mention is made to the positive or negative aspects of rotundity for the penning of dramatic or comedic text.
You did indeed bury those “Alpaca” associations deep, and stamped the earth down well.
But lately they have arisen, thrown back their shaggy heads and howled at the livid moon.
They will be slouching towards Bethlehem in due course, but not before they have paid a visit to your humble home, equipped with bolt-cutters and a brace-and-bit.
To the both of you,
Pinter may have been elongated but he most certainly could write. I was fortunate to see One For The Road in London years ago; and Mountain Language was a much underrated production.
At six foot whatever Pinter would have made a fine top order batsman, England’s problems being too many in the Boycott mould of low gravity and slow legs.
As to our own tall man, not Hurley, the writer, well whatever some may think, he has penned some damn enjoyable works in his time. You have to give the man credit where it is due.
I haven’t had the opportunity to see Ellis’s play “Shakespeare In Italy”, but have enjoyed the 2 hr BBC documentary made by Francesco da Mosta, also called “Shakespeare In Italy”. The “Shakespeare problem” has been a pea under the mattress of english literature for centuries, with quite a few going mad in pursuit of one theory or other – present co-playwright excluded, one hopes.
Williamson is bankable because he doesn’t involve himself in politics. That is the main difference
So Don’s Party, The Last Bastion, Martin Luther King, The Great Man, Don Parties On, The Sons Of Cain, Sanctuary and Dead White Males are not about politics.?
You are a fucking fool, and banned for life.
Hey Bob, this looks like it will be a huuuuge success, dontcha think ? …
http://afr.com/p/national/arts_saleroom/rupert_takes_the_stage_at_mtc_0nnG9Wnj1CZOJfc3ceJQGK
Rupert as Richard the Third, Williamson reckons. Better get a move on with funding for your Murdoch script before the tall guy steals your thunder again.
BOB! ~ see this article below:
http://www.theage.com.au/national/the-power-and-the-story-williamson-turns-his-pen-on-murdoch-a-modern-richard-iii-20120823-24p0i.html
(isn’t this a rip-off of your own long anticipated work on Murdoch??…)
(ps, it will be interesting to see how much of a ‘departure’ it truly is from Williamson’s usual latter-day dross / banality).