Summary
Scene 1
The play opens just as a school performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream is ending. A boy named Tom plays the part of Puck, and he delivers the closing monologue as the children around him (dressed as fairies) strike a tableau. After he finishes and the performers bow, the headmaster of the school, a man named Roy, comes out from behind the curtains and addresses the audience. He thanks each of the individual parents and teachers responsible for the play, then wishes everyone well for the upcoming Christmas and New Year holidays. He also acknowledges that the year is 1967-8. His speech ends rather anticlimactically, however, when he closes by reminding the audience not to trample the flower beds outside of the school.
Scene 2
After the play, Tom is backstage with a girl named Meg, with whom he acted in the play. Their conversation is clipped and complimentary, indicating a degree of mutual romantic interest. Tom gifts her a brooch, which he claims he stole for her. Meg says that she wishes she had gotten Tom a gift, and he says that her gift to him is the beautiful memories they share of the play. They joke about this, then discuss their potential futures. Meg says she wants to be an engine driver, but Tom is unable to say what he wants to do as an adult.
Meg keeps protesting that she ought to leave and go to her waiting parents, but Tom insists on continuing their conversation. He talks about how he thought to himself that perfume was a riskier purchase, and he mentions that most of the shop-girls he asked also suggested jewelry over perfume. Tom then jokes that Meg might have bought him a bottle of gin or a Harley Davidson, the latter of which Meg mistakenly assumes is a poet.
Suddenly, Meg's mother and father, Gwen and Jim, enter the scene. Gwen enters complaining about how there are many preparations for the family vacation still to be done that night, so they cannot wait around for Meg to talk to Tom. When Tom jokes at Gwen's hostility with a line from A Midsummer Night's Dream (i.e., "Ill met by moonlight"), Gwen is instantly aggressive and accusatory, saying that she did not know Meg was friends with Tom. While Jim says he enjoyed the play, Gwen complains about the boring nature of Shakespeare, and she says that she considers the play to have been a silly choice.
Next, Gwen asks Jim if he has their keys, but Jim says that he thought Gwen had them. This leads to a huge fit in which Gwen turns out the contents of her handbag and argues with Jim while searching for the keys. As Roy and his wife Coral enter, Jim finds the keys in his back pocket. Gwen remains upset and says she needs to take a Bex. Roy asks Gwen and Jim whether they enjoyed the play and got good pictures. While Jim comments briefly and positively, Gwen talks more and continues to complain about the serious nature of the play. Roy says that the theater was stuffy and asks about Gwen and Jim's upcoming vacation plans. Gwen tries to ask Coral if she enjoyed the play, but she is unresponsive and only stares vacantly.
Tom's parents, Harry and Vic, then enter the scene. They compliment their son and also praise Meg for her performance. When asked about their vacation plans, they say that they are going out for a drive and mention that they have only been in Australia for 8 years. Gwen and Jim ask if they are caravanning, and when Harry and Vic mention that they have more humble plans to stay in a tent, Gwen and Jim mention their brand-new caravan. Roy and Coral, on the other hand, plan on going to the Gold Coast. Roy and Coral then bid everyone well and leave. Once they exit, Gwen immediately starts to gossip about Coral's mood and her son, who has passed away.
Harry and Vic also leave with Tom, at which point Meg thanks Tom for his gift of the brooch. Upon hearing of this gift, Gwen gives her opinion that Tom is without prospect and that his family is too poor to go on vacation, since they work in a factory. Tom hears this, however, and he rushes back in to insult Gwen and wish her a "fucken miserable" holiday (11). Gwen then says that she thinks Harry and Vic's life to be dirty and sad, and she forbids Meg from spending time with Tom. She also expresses dislike for them on the basis of their status as immigrants.
Scene 3
Coral is standing alone outside. She delivers a monologue about the innocence and beauty of the children in the play, which moves her to tears when she thinks about their inevitable deaths. She concludes her monologue by saying "Alas" with a tone of despondency, something she herself has learned to do from dramas. Roy enters, telling Coral that he said to wait in the car. Coral claims that she was hot, and "just walking" to cool off (12). Roy tells her that they will have a drink when they get home, but Coral only repeats that she was "just walking."
Analysis
In these opening scenes, we are introduced to all of the play's central characters and—through the vehicles of their respective commentaries on the play and the holiday—are made to understand their essential traits. Tom and Meg, for example, are young, witty, and cynical; Gwen is anxious, snobby, and high-strung; Jim is calm and understated; Roy is genial yet controlling of his wife; Coral is placid and despondent; and Harry and Vic are happy yet materially poor. These scenes are also particularly important in establishing several of the play's major thematic concerns. These include, but are not limited to, a preoccupation with performance, an interest in class difference, the nature of nationality, and the tension between youth and adulthood/death.
The play's examination of performance is clear from the opening lines, themselves framed as part of a play-within-a-play. Considering that these lines from A Midsummer Night's Dream reference the fantastical nature of theater, in which one can bear witness to alternate realities and be moved by them, they can be thought of as a move to introduce readers and audience members to the drama we will witness. Later, the play's dramatic fixation also is clear in Coral's Scene 3 monologue. Not only is this monologue highly dramatic in a conventional sense—monologues and soliloquies being especially popular in theater—but it also calls back to the idea of performativity in how Coral chooses to appropriate the word "Alas." Coral has herself learned this word from "plays," so the fact that she uses it here to express her own sadness over both death (in general) and the (specific) loss of her son reflects the performative nature of individual emotional responses. Who, after all, is Coral saying "Alas" for, if not some implied audience?
Another theme that becomes very clear in the opening scenes is the nature of class difference in mid-century Australia. Tom's parents are ridiculed by Gwen for their humble employment and lifestyle, but these aspects of their lives also must necessarily be considered as related to their status as immigrants. Gwen's assertion that "no one asked them to come out to this country" stinks of classic xenophobia (11). Moreover, such claims reflect Gwen's vision of Australia as a place defined by material wealth and good manners. Note also in these scenes how Roy and Coral seem to be the most materially wealthy of the three couples, taking a plane to the Gold Coast rather than driving. This will come to be important later in the play, as Coral struggles to reconcile material comfort and capitalist ways of life with the price her family paid (i.e., the loss of her son in the Vietnam War).
The aforementioned ideas of what Australia represents, also introduced in these opening scenes, are central to the play's thematic concerns. Though Gwen sees Australia as a beacon of civilization and as an embodiment of some class/behavioral ideal, we are meant to immediately question her views. Australia is, after all, a state formed by immigrant prisoners through the exploitation and colonization of indigenous people—how could it be a nationally pure, homogenous, semi-suburban utopia? Moreover, consider in these scenes the way in which Australia is framed as a kind of escape—not just for Harry and Vic, but also for each of the families. They seek to escape the concerns of the everyday by journeying into the countryside, hoping to grow both as individuals and families. This is important to note, since by the end of the play, some of the families will be successful in their endeavors to heal, while for others the results of the healing process are more unclear and equivocal.
Finally, many clues are dropped in these opening scenes that ultimately guide us to understanding Tom as positioned between youth and death. When the curtain lifts for a final performers' bow in Scene 1, for example, the actors are "caught unready" (3). This metaphysically indicates the state of someone like Tom, terminally ill at a young age—never ready for the final curtain call of death, nor prepared to fully enjoy the small graces and happiness of youth, when granted. Moreover, the concern of Tom's parents when they walk in—regarding his temperature, his tiredness, and so on—reflect small efforts on their part to check in on their son's health, despite not wanting to tell him about his illness. His curt responses, on the other hand, indicate that he sees through their concern and already knows about the fate that awaits him.
