Summary
Scene 1
Written entirely in stage directions, Scene 1 is brief and has no dialogue.
We first see Roy come on the stage and look around vacantly for Coral.
Meanwhile, Gwen and Meg are packing the car up just as Jim enters with the assumed forgotten carton of gifts. Jim gives Gwen a pair of slippers, and the two reconcile in a tender, new way.
Coral then enters, carrying her hat upside down. She approaches Roy and shows him all the shells she has been collecting in her hat, and he kisses them and her hands.
Meg comes back from off the stage and picks up the cardboard carton.
Just as Roy and Coral leave the stage, Miss Latrobe from the school enters, and the lights and scene change right into Scene 2.
Scene 2
Back in the schoolyard, Miss Latrobe hands out King Lear and begins to read it with the students. She comments, "it is the struggle between man and nature, as well as between man and man, and between man and himself that make [King Lear], for me, [Shakespeare's] masterwork" (56). She talks about the power of nature in the play, and she urges Tom to read the King's opening speech, which he does. Notably, the speech is about the transference of wealth and inheritance from the elder generation to the younger generation.
In an alternate version of the play, however, these lines are read by someone other than Tom, implying his death from leukemia.
Analysis
Act 5, though incredibly brief, draws the play together with a very artfully crafted bow. In it, depending on version, we see all of the primary conflicts resolved and, in Scene 2, a very strong summary of several of the play's main themes.
In Scene 1, the fact that there is no dialogue is already very significant and symbolic. As the conflicts between the play's central couples are resolved, there is no longer any need for the performativity or pretense of dramatic monologues or dialogues. Rather, all that remains for each of the characters is, for the first time, the authentic expression of their emotions towards each other. Roy is genuinely worried about Coral; Gwen and Jim really do love one another; and Coral really does want to start over again with Jim.
Here, too, note the importance of symbols like the carton and the shells. The carton, when missing, was emblematic of everything wrong with the oppressive suburban idealism of Gwen and Jim's relationship, but when recovered, it allows each of them to touch once again on the spark of love that originally drew them together. The shells, on the other hand, are symbolic of the figurative shell that Coral has come out of in order to return to Roy. They are symbolic of her growth and her shedding of grief, and Roy acknowledges this by kissing both her and the shells. Her grief, though it will not control her, is important to her, and Roy has learned that loving Coral also means accepting her as a grieving mother.
In Scene 2, then, Miss Latrobe's speech deftly summarizes many of the central concerns of Away. Earlier described by Roy as "the person responsible for getting the whole show together you've seen here tonight" after the conclusion of A Midsummer Night's Dream, she here takes on the role of a kind of stage manager (4). The shows being referenced each time she appears, A Midsummer Night's Dream and King Lear, intersect with and connect to Away such that Miss Latrobe, though unseen for most of the play, can also be cheekily thought of as the stage manager for Away itself. This is especially clear in the way that she describes the central tensions of King Lear: "the struggle between man and nature, [...] between man and man, and between man and himself [...]" (56). These, too, are the central elements of Away, in which people have retreated into nature for a holiday and found ways to reconcile despite both internal and external pressures. Then finally, as if to put a finishing touch on this thematic summary, the actor who reads the final lines recites words about the continuance of one generation into the next, the means by which the central tensions between youth and death/adulthood are bridged. Depending on the version, it also cannot be ignored that Tom, the person at the center of this conflict throughout the play, is the one who speaks these lines.
The alternate endings to the play are also very important to consider. Are the messages that the play conveys about youth and death deepened or undercut by having Tom possibly die in an unseen and unacknowledged way? Moreover, does the fact that Vic and Harry are last seen leaving the play in Act 4 say anything about which ending is closer to Gow's original intent in writing the play? And moreover, where is Meg in the last act: does she deliver the closing lines? Has she run away from home? Or is she simply not present as this play is being read? Ultimately, it is up to readers to decide, but considering Miss Latrobe's comments on King Lear, it is likely that the play does not want us to think that these questions have an easy resolution in Away. Rather, it is more likely that the play was simply an exercise, a showcase designed to highlight the themes Miss Latrobe mentions and the typical responses that average Australians might have had to them in the 1960s. Through this dramatic technique, the play strikingly teaches us a great deal about ourselves and the ways we live, then returns us to more or less where we started, so that we may take stock of how we've changed and put this change into perspective.
