Homework Help: English: Books, Novels & Plays: Away

by Emily McPherson

"Away" is a play by Michael Gow

As summer is nearly here again, The AGE thought it appropriate to
examine Michael Gow's five-act play AWAY. Also, AWAY was recently
voted by readers of The AGE newspaper as their favorite Australian
play. This marvelous, many-layered exploration of modern Australian
life is also one of Australia's most successful plays. The Age's top
junior journalist Emily McPherson reports:

AWAY is set to the background of post-war baby-boom Australia when
Australians were preoccupied with Vietnam and the divisions within
society. With an elegant simplicity and a finely tuned sense of humor,
Michael Gow traces three ordinary, yet very different, families setting
off on their Christmas holidays during the summer of 1967-68. As in
Shakespearean and classical Greek drama, these journeys are turned into
spiritual quests.

The themes of reconciliation and loss emerge as one family deals
with the death of their son in the Vietnam War, another faces the
prospect of losing their son through leukemia, and the other by their
daughter simply growing up.

The families all head to the coast for their annual summer holidays
to celebrate the new year and embark on a pilgrimage with great
implications. All three families are brought together on the beach as a
result of a violent storm where the process of healing begins.

The hopes of a new generation, presented by the central characters of
Meg and Tom, rise above the social, cultural, and economic tensions
faced by their parents. In a rich, poetic and prophetic way, their time
'away' by the sea heals their battered spirits and deepens their sense
of going home.

The play, framed by two of Shakespeare's works, King Lear and Mid
Summer Night's Dream, has allusive references to Shakespearean and Greek
themes throughout. The main character Tom, who is physically dying but
seeks to live every moment, has an alter ego of Shakespeare's Puck. In
one outbreak of rage, Tom brings down a puckish spell on his mother by
saying "I hope you have a rotten holiday. I hope it rains. I hope the
dunnies overflow and you all get the runs."

This moving play prompts us to consider what is ultimately most
important in our lives.

Away is sharply observed, clever, funny and yet very moving. Out of the
familiar family ingredients, Gow constructs a magical play which deals
with going 'away' as in a holiday, Vietnam, leaving home, being
separated from family, loneliness, freedom, death, and the afterlife.
Every Australian can relate to this play and learn about the deeper
meaning to life.