Williamson is widely recognised as Australia’s most successful playwright and over the last thirty years his plays have been performed throughout Australia and produced in Britain, United States, Canada and many European countries. A number of his stage works have been adapted for the screen, including The Removalists, Don’s Party, The Club, Travelling North, Emerald City, Sanctuary and Brilliant Lies.
Williamson was the principal screenwriter for Balibo which won the 2010 Australian Film Institute Award for best adapted screenplay. He has also won the Australian Film Institute film script award for Petersen (1974), Don’s Party (1976), Gallipoli (1981) and Travelling North (1987) and has won twelve Australian Writers’ Guild AWGIE Awards. He lives on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast with his writer wife, Kristin Williamson.
FIRST PRODUCTION
The Removalists was first presented at the Café La Mama, Melbourne, on 22 July 1971, with the following cast:
SERGEANT DAN SIMMONDS Peter Cummins
CONSTABLE NEVILLE ROSS Bruce Spence
KATE LE PAGE Kristin Green
FIONA CARTER Fay Byrne
KENNY CARTER Paul Hampton
ROB, THE REMOVALIST David Williamson
Directed by Bruce Spence
CHARACTERS
SERGEANT DAN SIMMONDS
CONSTABLE NEVILLE ROSS
KATE MASON
FIONA CARTER
KENNY CARTER
ROB, the removalist
ACT ONE
The play opens in a small inner suburban police station, built fairly recently, but already having an air of decrepit inefficiency. SERGEANT DAN SIMMONDS, fat and fiftyish, lounges at a battered old desk from which he surveys CONSTABLE NEVILLE ROSS, as if he were auditioning him for a crucial role in some play. ROSS is twenty. There is a long pause.
ROSS: Well. What would you like me to do, Sarge?
SIMMONDS: For a start you could stop bouncing up and down on your bloody toes. [Pause.] D’you think they’ll stop your pay cheque if you’re caught standing still.
ROSS: [nervously] The pay’s not too bad these days, is it?
SIMMONDS: [looking at a crossword puzzle he has been doing] Magician in six letters, Ross. [Pause.] It’s all right. I’ve got it. [He writes something.] The money is not good, Ross. The money could be good if you happened to be in the right places but this isn’t one of them. No pay-offs here, boy. A few perks, but no pay-offs.
ROSS: A recruit under twenty-one gets full adult pay these days. Did you know that?
SIMMONDS: How old are you, Ross?
ROSS: Twenty.
SIMMONDS: Money’s not important, boy.
ROSS: You’ve got to consider it.
SIMMONDS: You’ve got to consider your arsehole too. What’s your old man do for a crust?
ROSS: My old man?
SIMMONDS: Is he still alive?
ROSS: Yes.
SIMMONDS: What’s he do?
ROSS: [embarrassed] Er… I’d rather not say.
SIMMONDS: [irritated by ROSS’s reticence.] God, he must be a nightman or something. Slinging shit.
ROSS: He’s a carpenter.
SIMMONDS: What’s wrong with that? Christ was a carpenter. Shouldn’t be ashamed of your old man because he’s a carpenter.
ROSS: I’m not ashamed of him.
SIMMONDS: No? I thought I noticed a little bit of hesitancy in your voice, boy. I thought it sounded as if you were ashamed of him.