Hannie Rayson’s "Two Brothers" – the play, and the reviewing history – "Webdiary" review essay by Tony Kevin, 27 July 2005

http://webdiary.smh.com.au/archives/margo_kingston/001334.html

( TK Note: There is commentary on Webdiary arising out of this essay, with notable contributions by Marg Hutton and Craig Rowley)

Commentary by Margo Kingston, July 27, 2005 12:45 PM:

G'day. Tony Kevin retired from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in 1998 after a thirty-year public service career. He is the author of A Certain Maritime Incident - The Sinking of Siev X. See Peter King's Webdiary review of the book at Liberal voter rumblings mean second front for Howard.

 

Hannie Rayson’s "Two Brothers" – the play, and the reviewing history

• by Tony Kevin, 27 July 2005

 

Last weekend I finally got to see Hannie Rayson’s "Two Brothers" on its closing night in Canberra, following successful seasons in Melbourne and Sydney. Given the now-fading topicality of its subject matter – the gross, possibly criminal, official Australian cruelty towards boat people asylumseekers in 2000-2001 - and the studied exercise in discreditation it underwent at the hands of a battery of commentators and critics, it is unlikely to be revived commercially any time soon.

This review essay comments both on the play itself and on its critical reception: stories which tells us much about the current intimidated climate of intellectual and moral debate in Australia. I hope many Webdiary readers will have seen or heard about the play.

First, disclaimers: I have never met, corresponded with, or spoken by phone with Hannie Rayson. In the excellent Sydney and Canberra program brochures (worth keeping for interest and archival value), Rayson acknowledges my book " A Certain Maritime Incident" as one of four reference sources. She also cites Marr and Wilkinson’s "Dark Victory", Frank Brennan’s "Tampering with Asylum", and Raymond Gaita’s Quarterly Essay "Breach of Trust".

The SIEV X sinking history - recounted at different levels of detail and emphasis by Marr and Wilkinson, Brennan, Gaita and myself – is central to Rayson’s fictional theme. Of the four books she cites, mine is closest to her plotline, because it goes further than any of the other three books in raising concrete questions about the possible extent of criminal culpability of Australian border protection agencies (ADF, AFP, senior Commonwealth departments) in the failure to rescue 353 people who drowned on SIEV X when it sank in international waters south of Indonesia in the Australian Operation Relex border protection zone.

The first edition of "Dark Victory" (2003) asserted flatly that " Australia did not kill those who drowned on SIEV X but their deaths cannot be ruled out the reckoning entirely". The second edition (2004) replaces this exonerating sentence with much more open-ended language. Marr and Wilkinson’s present view seems closer to Rayson’s own (in her Writer’s Note in the program):

" On 19 October 2001 a refugee boat sank on its way to Australia – the SIEV X. I began work on this play intending to base the narrative on a true account of the SIEV X but abandoned it because the inconsistencies and obfuscations on the public record make it impossible to know what really happened. Why 353 people drowned when the boat went down in a heavily watched area of ocean is not at all transparent. The dimensions of this tragedy - and the unnerving sense that we are not being told the whole truth - is compounded by our cruel treatment of asylum seekers, by the inhumanity of the "Pacific Solution" and by mandatory detention."

I could not have summarised the SIEV X issue better myself.

Watching Rayson’s play, I had the same unnerving sense of my personal SIEV X experience being rolled out before me, as I had when I saw Version 1.0’s brilliant satirical theatre (albeit in an entirely different style), "A Certain Maritime Incident", which played in Sydney and Canberra in 2004. Words I had recorded, statements of fact I had heard or read in Senate CMI Committee Hansard, were echoed in Rayson’s crisp fictional dialogue. To me this of itself gives the play great authenticity and credibility, and it leads me to wonder why so many critics (see below) were so determined to try to deny Rayson any authenticity.

For example, the fictional survivor Hazem Al Ayad’s harrowing account of the fictional boat sinking draws heavily on various survivors’ actual recorded statements in Bogor after the SIEV X disaster. The words in which Eggs Benedict’s son in the Navy, Lachlan, expresses his conflicts of duty versus conscience over the cruelties his fictional Navy frigate was inflicting on asylum-seekers under orders from Canberra reflect the facts of conflicts experienced by Commander Norman Banks of HMAS Adelaide in the SIEV 4 interception, by the crew of HMAS Tobruk, and by Dr Duncan Wallace, RAN Naval Reserve psychologist serving on HMAS Arunta, the ship admitted in the ADF’s Senate CMI evidence to have been closest to SIEV X at the time of the sinking, 150 nautical miles away. But since at this time Defence officials were still claiming falsely that SIEV X sank in the Sunda Strait, a claim that Ministers Ellison and Vanstone have recently quietly abandoned – now admitting it sank in international waters, I wonder now where the real truth lies on HMAS Arunta’s distance from the sinking.

The bewilderment and despair of brother Tom Benedict, when his attempt to denounce the ADF vessel’s crime under orders in turning away from the survivors of the sinking is ignored by a cynical or hostile media, mirrors my painful memories of the media’s lack of interest in pursuing the factual SIEV X questions Marg Hutton and I were publicly exposing in 2002 and 2003. As Eggs Benedict and his adviser Jamie Savage remind Tom, nobody wants to hear this stuff anymore.

The play also mirrors reality in its portrayal of the ruthlessness of some politicians and their close advisers, and their willingness to lie and dissemble and obfuscate truth in important matters of public accountability, in their single-minded pursuit of power. In the career of Phillip Ruddock – the character to whom Eggs Benedict seems closest in present-day politics, not Peter Costello – the facts as so tellingly recalled in the program notes speak for themselves. This is a man who conspicuously sold his soul in 2000-2001 for political gain.

More generally, we recognise in the play the extent to which some of our leaders are ready to ignore (or cynically play upon) the public sense of morality and fair play, in their determined quest to gain or hold onto power. I found many of Eggs Benedict’s propositions about political life recognisable and unnerving. This play is not by any means a fantasy caricature of our political leaders or would-be leaders.. Remember former Minister Peter Reith’s political record – the Dubai- trained ex-soldier mercenary dockworkers, the attack dogs on the wharves ….

Rayson cleverly links together the border security and mandatory detention aspects by a neat theatrical device: that the survivor Hazem had previously been through detention centre processing in Australia and been granted a Temporary Protection Visa, the conditions of which he violated in order to fly back to Indonesia to accompany his family on the boat that sank. It is a hauntingly powerful idea. To my knowledge, no one who died on SIEV X did this – but many bereaved men must still be reproaching themselves for not having done so and died with their families.

And we do not forget Ruddock’s refusal to allow Sondos Ismail’s husband Ahmed to fly to Indonesia to grieve together with her after SIEV X sank, and Kim Beazley’s uncourageous refusal as Labor leader to risk any votes on the issue.

In terms of overall political context, then, Rayson’s play is right on the money. It portrays with forensic accuracy the motives and methods of the people who ordered and ran Operation Relex and its associated onshore disruption operations in Indonesia, and their preparedness in 2000-2001 to do whatever it takes to gain their political objectives, at no matter what cost in misery and disruption of vulnerable boat people’s lives - possibly extending even to their avoidable deaths. The Benedict family dialogues rings true – they are real enough.

But the complexities and shades of grey of reality inevitably had to be simplified to fit a 90 minute play, and to create plot, action and resolution. Tom Hyland’s review in The Age attacked the play’s many departures from the factual reality as he saw it, concluding:

"It's a pity Rayson has ignored another political truism: truth is the best propaganda."

But in a letter to The Age in response, Rayson stressed her play is a work of fiction:

"Writing a play is different from writing a piece of investigative journalism. In Tom Hyland's attack on my play (Opinion, 15/4), he writes that Two Brothers is ‘a compelling, provocative and entertaining dramatic thriller’. But apparently, that is not enough. According to Hyland, I've written a terrific play - but it fails because it is not a factual account of what happened to the SIEV X, the refugee boat that sank on its way to Australia on October 19, 2001".

In his review in The Australian, Peter Craven lamented that there was not enough complexity or self-doubt in Eggs Benedict to make him an interesting villain. In similar vein, Hyland says Benedict is "little more than a cartoon nasty in his words and deeds ". I don’t agree. Some politicians (fortunately, not all) are quite remarkably one-dimensional. Such politicians are mostly interested in the pursuit of power, and don’t waste time on self-doubts.

The comparisons cited in the program notes on "The Theatrical Villain " between Eggs Benedict, and Shakespeare’s Richard III and Francis Urquhart in the contemporary BBC TV drama "House of Cards", are to my mind relevant and fair. In boasting that he sleeps well at night, Benedict puts himself squarely in Richard III and Urquhart villain territory. He is no tortured Macbeth (although his coldly ruthless adviser and lover, Jamie Savage, comes closer to Lady Macbeth).

The point is that the dramatic tension Craven and Hyland miss in Benedict is actually played out in the story of the responses of his horrified family members to his manipulative strategies – in the end, despite all their moral doubts and disgust at him, they one by one succumb to his blackmail and bribes.

Eggs plays a seemingly weak hand with great coolness, ad in the end wins. Had any member of his family called his bluff, he would not be able to become Prime Minister. But none do so. His wife Fiona reverts to long-practiced submission, after a brief flirtation with revolt. His idealistic brother Tom and the latter’s wife Ange cave in at the terrible prospect of a 15-year jail sentence for their loved son Harry on trumped-up drug charges engineered by Eggs and Jamie. Lachlan succumbs too, in final disgusted recognition that his sense of filial loyalty matters more to him than his public ethics. This is a bleak vision of how evil triumphs when good people for whatever reason do nothing, or do not do enough to make the difference.

To me this works as dramatic theatre. The play symbolises the more complex and greyer reality of life in the national security state that Australia is fast becoming. Hundreds of people with some real knowledge of what happened to cause the sinking of SIEV X and the 353 drowned people on board must have faced similar, if less dramatic, dilemmas of conscience and career to those portrayed in the play. In four years, they have said nothing. Why are ADF, AFP, senior public service officials – serving or retired – still keeping silent about those circumstances? As the play portrays, the combination of service loyalties and fears of punishment is potent indeed.

For this reason, I find the young naval officer Lachlan one of the most interesting characters in the play, entirely believable as he swings from initial blind loyalty to outraged denunciation to final weary acquiescence. This is how things are in Canberra’s real national security world.

Perhaps that is why the Canberra audience at the play was somewhat thoughtful and subdued as they left the theatre. I imagine their mirth and excitement at the political jokes was less hearty than in Sydney or Melbourne, because this Canberra audience recognises the realities of official power and the intimidation that this power can exercise in the maintenance of state secrets.

On one important level , the play fails: but to be a good fast-moving story, it had to. It fails to portray the reality of the banality of evil, which is boring and undramatic. The reality, I suspect, is that no single person will ever be found to have given an order " Let this boat sink – and take no action to try to save the people ". No, it will turn out, like Rau and Solon and all the other cruel cases, to have been a matter of complex bureaucratic process failure – incremental sequences of bad and callous information mishandlings and misjudgements in the chain of command, with responsibility diffused among so many people and agencies that in the end, because so many will share in the blame, no one individual will be really to blame. One could not turn that banal reality of evil into gripping theatre. "Two Brothers" is gripping theatre.

On the specific hinge on which the plot turns - that a RAN vessel witnessed the sinking of a SIEV boat but on direct orders from an Australian Government Minister took no action to rescue survivors in the water - the present state of public knowledge of what happened on SIEV X does not allow one to say definitely that this is impossible. One can have the view, as I do, that it is most unlikely that a whole RAN frigate crew would be able to maintain silence for four years about such a grossly unethical and criminal action. I think it most unlikely that it will ever be found that HMAS Arunta was at the sinking scene. But I cannot altogether exclude that possibility. Given the extent of already exposed lying by officials under sworn oath about other important evidentiary matters in the Senate CMI enquiry, one cannot be 100% certain of this, until there is a full powers judicial inquiry to clear the air.

I believe the truth will turn out eventually to be more grey - that many people were involved in the sanctioning and conduct, and the use of intelligence gained from, complex covert disruption operations in Indonesia, that involved criminal negligence of people’s right to their property and their lives; and that there was then a subsequent sustained criminal cover-up of that history of negligence. For example, as set out in my book, there are good factual grounds for believing that RAAF surveillance flight records as presented as fact to the Senate CMI Committee in 2002 were tampered with. This is not as dramatic or clear-cut as Rayson’s fictional scenario, but highly chilling nonetheless.

 

FINALLY I want to offer some analysis of how the play was received by the media. Like my factual book on SIEV X, it was targeted from the beginning for pro-government efforts to discredit it and thereby to limit its public impact. The play opened on 13 April. On that same day – obviously before any opportunity to see the play – Andrew Bolt wrote the first of two violent diatribes against the play and against Rayson personally, "Shameful Saga of Hate" in the Herald-Sun. For example:

"If you still need proof of how far up its own fundament our artists have crawled, go to tonight's premiere of Hannie Rayson's play, ‘Two Brothers’ …. this vomit of smug hate … see how cruelly and hysterically she [Rayson] smears our defence personnel, and anyone who even votes Liberal".

He followed up this remarkable (even by his own standards) piece two days later, again in the Herald-Sun, with "Hannie’s evil brew", containing an unsubtle warning that most of Rayson’s artistic work had been financed by national arts subsidies and implying that all this could now be at risk:

"So how has she been able to keep distant all these fellow Australians, all those potential theatregoers, without at least going broke from lack of ticket sales? And why does she so hate or fear these non-Leftists?

I suspect it's that flood of government gold that allows Rayson to drink and drink, without having to ask nicely for water from the passing crowd instead. That great gush of public money that makes our guzzling artists praise the Lord for big government of the Left and fear the Liberal demons who might turn off that tap, and point them to their public.

See for yourself how government cash has trained, paid, feted, nursed and staged Rayson or her works, making the public's verdict indecisive, if not irrelevant. …"

This is savage stuff – exactly the sort of smear that Jamie Savage in the play might have placed with supportive media people in order to protect her employer’s interests. Once again, Rayson’s art reflects life. Bolt’s words bring to mind a key moment in the play, when Eggs threatens his brother Tom that the funding of his social welfare organisation will be at risk if he continues to stir up trouble for the government on refugee issues.

Bolt’s initial crude polemics were followed by five more serious, but finally negative, reviews: Tom Hyland in The Age on 15 April, "Drowning in Propaganda"; Bryce Hallett in The Sydney Morning Herald on 23 May; Peter Craven in The Australian on 18 June "Shadow Play"; Craig Sherborne in The Australian Book Review June-July issue, "Up the Garden Path"; and finally Gerard Henderson in The Sydney Morning Herald on 28 June "Left intelligentsia misses right turn". Note that this is not just the Murdoch press by any means; these negative reviews appeared right across the spectrum. .

Bolt’s hatchet jobs having set the tone, no major media critic gave any degree of credit to the play. The general verdict was that Rayson, a playwright of acknowledged and deserved high repute, had failed as a dramatist in her attempt to tackle what is probably the biggest moral issue in Australia today – the cruel treatment of boat people and people in detention centres. Various reasons were advanced for why she had failed, many discussed already in this essay. But what is remarkable is the uniformity of condemnation from critics whom one would not have thought would all come to such similarly negative conclusions. The reviews with the exception of Sherborne’s review in ABR can all be read on Marg Hutton’s website www.sievx.com .

Fortunately, audiences did not heed these minatory critiques: they saw the play in packed houses. But the whole unpleasant experience must have given Rayson and the Melbourne Theatre Company anxious moments. After all, a lot had been invested in this play and its success in the marketplace. The warning sent to Rayson and more importantly to others who might be tempted to heed her play’s message or to write more plays or books on socially or politically contentious subjects was, I believe, unambiguous : go down this road and we will try to destroy you in the public marketplace.

Few rose to Rayson’s defence in print. The Age published a few supportive letters in response to Hyland’s review, including from Hilary McPhee and myself. Apart from a favourable review on the World Socialist Website, that was about it. ( I checked this on Google – my apologies if I have missed any other important mainstream reviews)

And this of course is the climate in which we live now. We live in a time of sanitisation or intimidation of unwelcome public messages to mainstream society .

One more irony worth exploring – many of the critiques I have listed argued that Rayson’s play was defective because it had not represented the actual history of SIEV X. Yet none of the six reviewers reported the important fact of the Senate’s repeated passed motions demanding an independent judicial inquiry into the sinking of SIEV X ( the very words Tom uses in the play) . Hallett and Craven did not comment at all on this fact. Here is how the other four critiques ignored, misrepresented or obscured this matter of fact:

Bolt, 13 April: "Rayson has called for an inquiry into that tragedy, and her play endorses the vile conspiracy theory that SIEV X sank as our sailors watched from a patrolling naval ship, refusing to save the drowning."

Bolt, 15 April: "And, of course, her Costello is satanic enough to tell a navy ship not to save hundreds of illegal asylum-seekers drowning under its very bows -- a reference to the sinking off Indonesian waters in 2001 of SIEV-X, which conspiracy theorists believe was indeed abandoned by our sailors."

Hyland, 16 April: "There are plenty of unsettling and unanswered questions about Australia's role in the SIEV X disaster. But despite her purported research, Rayson has overlooked much of what is on the public record. A Senate committee that reported in October 2002 found no evidence the RAN knew about the sinking and failed to act. Labor senator John Faulkner, who had doggedly pursued the Government on the "children overboard" affair, said any suggestion the navy had abandoned the SIEV X survivors was "very unfair". Instead, Faulkner said he and his colleagues were confident the navy "acted appropriately in relation to a safety of life at sea issue".

Henderson, 28 June: "The assertion that the navy allowed asylum seekers to drown was emphatically denied by the navy's former maritime commander, Rear-Admiral G.F. Smith. What's more, no one has been able to produce any evidence to substantiate this assertion which traduces Australia's sailors. Obviously Rayson finds conspiracies make more compelling stories than facts".

Sherborne, ABR ( discussing the program references to Marr and Wilkinson, myself and other books cited by Rayson ):

"Yes, there is a disclaimer, in fine print, that the play is fiction, but discerning audience members could be forgiven for feeling led up the garden path , primed for a fiction spliced tightly with fact. Some may be so puzzled that they wonder if they’ve been the target of a tacky promotional ploy. Personally, if I were cited as one of those sources and references, I’d be bloody ropeable".

Perhaps I am bloody ropeable - but only at Sherborne’s egregious misrepresentation of Rayson’s play, a play which I believe is precisely "a fiction spliced tightly with fact". I warmly applaud Rayson’s courage in writing this fine play, and I hope - pace the opinions of the eminently authoritative Peter Craven – that it will enter into the canon of important Australian plays to be read, studied and performed in years to come.

Tony Kevin, Canberra.