Williamson’s ability to connect with his audience—and let me add that his audience is remarkably diverse in age, education and social status—is largely due to his respect for it. He does not pander to it, patronise it or necessarily agree with it; but he respects it. In the same way, he respects the people he creates on stage. He does not caricature them or unnecessarily embellish them. He respects them. This is basically what the magic of Williamson’s name on the billboard is all about: Williamson’s modest expectation is that the audience will know what he is talking about and the audience’s expectation is that Williamson will generously reward them with the pain and laughter of self-recognition and a greater awareness of the world they live in. They are rarely disappointed. In my own case, Williamson has significantly altered my perception of my fellow Australians. I am sure I am not the only one.

It is no mean feat. We are a complex and self-conscious lot in Australia. Our traditional sense of inferiority manifests itself under various guises that range from diffidence to boozy aggression but seldom include soul-searching confrontation or the flash of self-criticism. So Williamson has fossicked out of his experience those areas of life where circumstance or obsession allows a group of people to behave in a manner untypical of themselves—moments when they feel liberated to express themselves undercover, as it were, from real life. In early plays—Don’s Party and Jugglers Three in particular—excessive alcohol was the circumstance or catalyst. Most recently, the obsessional worlds of the department head estranged from his wife, who gives his life to his job and the ambitious film director who yearns to equate commercial success with creative prowess, have provided circumstances for the sort of public unbuttoning which is both characteristically Australian and quint-essentially Williamson.

In The Club, which I would class as Williamson’s most technically assured piece of work to date, he takes on the fanatical world of sport and concentrates on those who are obsessed by it. In Melbourne, Australian Rules Football has as fixed a place in the hearts and minds of the population as the Melbourne Cup or complaining about the weather. It is a public pastime which consumes thousands of newspaper column inches each year and to which radio and television devote most of the weekend and a good part of the rest of the week as well. Any institution so monolithic has detractors as well as admirers and Aussie Rules is always ripe for caricature, albeit difficult as anyone who sampled the television series And The Big Men Fly will know.