Emerald City (play)

"Emerald City" is a 1987 play by Australian playwright David Williamson, a satire about two entertainment industries: film and publishing.

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The plays centers around the Rogers family, loosely modelled on Williamson's own. They have recently moved from Melbourne to Sydney. Colin is Australia's most successful screenwriter (like Williamson), but currently down on his luck. He doesn't want to make what he perceives as a "movie of the week" about Tony Sanzari and an amusement park hijacking that is offered to him by his agent, Elaine Ross, but a story about the coastwatchers of World War II, because his uncle was one, and it was Australia's great contribution to the war. His wife, Kate, is a book editor and wants to publish a novel by Aboriginal writer Kath Mitchell titled "Black Rage", but her publisher, Ian Wall, says "Blacks don't sell books." They have three children, Penny, who has been frequenting a disco called Downmarket, Hannah, whose teachers say she is depressed, and Sam, whom Colin fears Kate is encouraging to be gay.

Colin teams with a womanizing hack writer named Mike McCord to work on "Coastwatchers", who hates the idea, but wants his name on the film as co-writer because it's an instant status boost in the industry, even though he is primarily just typing dictation. When he hears of Kate's problem, he prank calls Ian Wall, accuses him of racism, and threatens that a group of militants will mob the publishing house if he doesn't publish "Black Rage".

"Coastwatchers" proves a ratings disaster, so Mike latches onto Colin for another project, a rip-off of "Miami Vice" set in Australia and loaded with Australianisms. Malcolm Bennett, who usually finances Colin's productions, advises him to get back with Elaine because his project is "shit". "So is "Miami Vice"," Colin responds. "That's classy shit;" Malcolm tells him, "this is "absolute" shit." The difference is that the writers of "Miami Vice" are writing at the best of their abilities, while the fact that Colin is writing below his level is painfully obvious. During this time, Colin becomes attracted to Mike's girlfriend, Helen Davey, but ultimately draws the line in the friendship and avoids cheating on his wife.

Ultimately, Kath Mitchell is nominated for the Booker Prize, and Kate accompanies her and Ian Wall to the awards ceremony, though she does not win. Although Kate tells Colin that Ian looks like a "garden gnome" she admits to the audience (the play contains a great deal of direct address monologues) that she was unfaithful. A disillusioned Colin returns to Elaine Ross and accepts the project she offered him. Elaine calls Sydney "The Emerald city of Oz. Everyone comes here along their yellow brick roads looking for the answers to their problems and all they find are the demons within themselves."

The play takes many swipes at contemporary occurrences in the entertainment industry, such as Steven Spielberg's purchase of Australian writer Thomas Keneally's novel "Schindler's Ark", which one character jokes will be made into a film in which the Jews are rescued by space aliens. At one point, Mike sums up the "great Australian novel", Henry Handel Richardson's "The Fortunes of Richard Mahony", as "Doctor's marriage goes bad, he goes to the goldfields, gets gangrene and dies", to which Kate says "I don't think your synopsis quite does the book justice". To that, he simply dismisses it as a "downer".

Major Performances

The play was first performed in Australia in 1987.

It premirered in the United States off-Broadway by the New York Theatre Workshop at the Perry Street Theatre in Greenwich Village in 1988.

The cast was as follows:

Colin: Daniel Gerroll

Elaine: Doris Black

Kate: Gates McFadden

Mike: Dan Butler

Helen: Alice Haining

Malcolm: Jerry Manning

The other characters do not appear on-stage.

Film

Also in 1988, Michael Jenkins directed a very fast-paced film version (Australian speech is conventionally relatively slow, but not in this film). Much of the play's dialogue is retained, though discussion of off-stage characters is usually replaced with their appearance and a more conventionally cinematic level and speed of dialogue. Also, the younger daughter Hannah was omitted.

The principal cast includes:

Colin: John Hargreaves

Kate: Robyn Nevin

Mike: Chris Haywood

Helen: Nicole Kidman

Elaine: Ruth Cracknell

Malcolm: Dennis Miller

Penny: Ella Scott

Sam: Haydon Samuels

Ian: Nicholas Hammond

Kath: Michelle Torres

The Australian Film Institute nominated it for five awards: Best Actor (John Hargreaves), Best Achievement in Cinematography (Paul Murphy), Best Adapted Screenplay (David Williamson), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Nicole Kidman), and Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Chris Haywood), for which it won.

The film has never been released on home video in the United States, though it has been shown on the cable channel Romance Classics. A region-free PAL DVD was released in the United Kingdom by an anomnymous company in Herts (VFC31962 NL041; UPC: 5 017633 41002 >) sometimes given online as "Hollywood Classics". This edition was pressed with a ten-second jump in the master early in the film. Although this jump is noted in the counter, it happens in exactly the same place on all copies.

Possible Inspirations

Williamson and Denis Whitburn worked on a World War II miniseries with director Chris Thomson titled "The Last Bastion", which ran on Network Ten. The running time was 360 minutes. (Academy Home Entertainment released a version that ran only 160 minutes to U.S. home video, which reflects the point in the play about Americans caring little for what goes on in Australia or its cinema). The miniseries was much ballyhooed but was not well rated. Also, Williamson assisted his brother-in-law, Chris Löfvén, on "Oz", an Australian rock musical film that retold "The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)" on the streets of Melbourne. The fictional Land of Oz rarely comes up in Australian conversation; the term is used almost exclusively as the nickname for one's own country.