Regularly added bite-sized reviews about Literature, Art, Music & Film.
Voltaire said the secret of being boring is to say everything.
We do not wish to say everything or see everything; life, though long is too short for that.
We hope you take these little syntheses in the spirit of shared enthusiasm.
(Director – not to be mentioned. He is not to be encouraged.) [Zach Cregger directed, his first, possibly last, effort, although the film made good money apparently – Facts matter- ED.]
“Barbarian” is not rateable on the “Babadook Scale“. It’s not that sort of horror movie. It’s the sort on which even fewer pesky script meetings are wasted. You can determine whether you have seen this film by casting yourself in the lead role and answering the following questions.
(a) Get the Hell out of there, or
(b) Go into the cellar of the B and B to get some toilet paper?
2. In the cellar you find a hidden room containing only a stained mattress, a bucket and a camera on a tripod. Do you:-
(a) Get the Hell out of there, or
(b) Grab a torch and go down another set of slimy wet steps into the darkness and then into to a further hidden room?
3. You’ve escaped from the underground cages and the hideous, murderous monster. Do you:-
(a) Get the Hell out of there, or
(b) Go back down alone and unarmed to attempt to save another captive?
If you answered ‘b” to all of the above then you have seen this film before, although it may not have been called “Barbarian”. Here are some bonus questions, in case you are still uncertain. These are easier yet, because with films as bad as “Barbarian” as our point of reference, the answer is always “yes”.
Does the Magic Negro get beaten to death with his own severed arm?
Does the cellar door lock itself behind you?
Are there false deaths?
Are we left without an explanation about the double booking?
Was there an inexplicable interlude which leads to suspicion that two films were accidentally spliced together?
Is an unpleasant person who drives a fancy car punished?
Do the police refuse to believe the hysterical black woman?
Is the film as revolting, misogynistic, ridiculous and boring as “Bone Tomahawk” but without any redeeming features (such as Kurt Russell).?
The director cannot be forgiven. The actors can because they do passably, given that they were knitting barbed wire with overcooked spaghetti. They possibly deserve second chances. “Barbarian” however, does not..
Continue Reading →Adelaide Festival Theatre, 12 June 2024
The most famous pair of legs since Betty Grable, Rhonda Burchmore took to the Cabaret Festival stage in a show that gave a full house souvenirs, stories, selfies and songs from her 42 year career (details linked in Wikipedia below), in an amusing reverie touching upon gigs and hotels from hell, celebrities with peccadillos, almost-but-not-quite meeting Michael Jackson, the idiosyncratic Betty Buckley and her vicious Macaw, and more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhonda_Burchmore
Covering a wide range of songs from ONJ, Melissa Manchester, Eartha Kitt, Bette Midler, Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse, etc., (song list below), Rhonda’s voice can still belt them out; her stories (ranging from vibrant to, frankly, wan) were engaging enough, a slice of tap-dancing and some by-play with her excellent 3-piece band, made for a charming evening. Rhonda strives to please and be liked, and she succeeds.
Song list:
Back to Black
Come in from the Rain
Love You Inside Out
My Discarded Men
Out of My Life
Pretty Legs and Great Big Knockers
Screw Loose
Slow Boat to China
They Just Keep Moving the Line
The World Still Turns
Xanadu
Continue Reading →Dir. Luca Guadagnino (2024)
Our fabulous Guest Reviewer, Rita, gives us her thoughts on “Challengers”. Thank you, Rita, we didn’t get to see it, all we know about it is that there’s a lot of tennis, so we thank you for your input. NB We know Rita well and she is anything but shallow! See also Rita’s equally pithy review of “Fremont“.
The three main characters are awful people in my view but my mind became addled and distracted by the overwhelming physical gorgeousness of Tashi (played effectively by Zendaya). Thus, I have exposed my shallow nature, but I would be interested to hear what people think of this film other than that it is too long.
[Ed: Tennis films are problematic – e.g. the egregious “Players” (1979). Here at least there seems to be a love triangle, which suggests American Doubles. The Spectator reviewer ‘quite’ liked it.] Continue Reading →Directed by Babak Jalali (2023)
Our insightful Guest Reviewer, Rita, gives us her thoughts on “Fremont”. Rita exhorted us to see it and we are really sorry that we missed it, because Rita knows what is what. So thank you Rita. Please send us more reviews of the weird and the wonderful. See also Rita’s equally succinct review of “Challengers“.
I am really interested in your critique(s) on this film. I was gripped by this strange but engaging little gem. Loved the odd beauty of the following. She said, “I brought you a deer.” He replied, “I wanted a deer.” Endearing and funny.
[For post-war trauma, I’d plump for The Deerhunter personally, but still, this looks like a Jim Jarmusch-type, intimate jewel – Ed.] Continue Reading →Adelaide Festival Theatre, Dunstan Playhouse, 24 May 2024
The Woman in Black is an adaptation of Susan Hill’s 1983 Gothic novel, by Stephen Mallatratt, concerning a mysterious spectre that haunts Eel Marsh House in a small, remote English town. It’s a hoary old piece, and a tad clunky, but the novel, film and TV versions, and the play, have been consistently popular – only The Mousetrap (another mediocre piece) has had a longer run on the West End.
There’s some post-modern, story-about-a-story business, as Arthur Kipps (John Waters), a self-effacing and strangely diminished solicitor, tries to enliven his story for an actor (Daniel MacPherson) he has retained to tell it. So as fast as you can say ‘flashbacks,’ there we are, young solicitor travels to an old dark house to wind-up the estate of dowager Mrs. Alice Drablow. Shades of Jonathan Harker’s trip to the Carpathian Mountains.
Whilst the lawyer is sifting through papers, we are treated to a bunch of “effects without causes”* – the usual smorgasbord of haunted house tropes; slamming doors, screams, flashes of light and flashes of darkness, the sound of a horse and trap and fleeting appearances by a mysterious woman in black – we eventually learn about a single mother, a child, his fate and her revenge, and revenge’s lengthening shadow.
Every plot point creaks and croaks as from under a wheel; the gothic touches spill untidily as straw from a broken doll, but it survives as pleasant entertainment due to the accomplished playing of two accomplished actors, Waters and MacPherson. The woman in black does dramatic entrances and exits, although she was not disposed to answer the curtain call. This is a nice and uncerebral night’s entertainment, that could do with some tightening of the script, and perhaps be enhanced by some more pyrotechnics when it heads to its national run.
[*”Effects without causes.” Thus Wagner, commenting on an opera by Meyerbeer.] Continue Reading →“Oxymoron“, Arkaba Hotel Top Room, 23 May 2024
The Arkaba Top Room is perfect for stand-up comedy – sit where you like, and there’s a handy bar. TVC chose a high table where we could enjoy the contents of a bottle of wine, settle in, and enjoy the querulous but funny Stephen K. Amos.
With his show, Oxymoron, Amos is not revealing all new material, but who cares. His basic niceness allows him to get away with audience interactions – a young man named “Marcus” was awarded the unfortunate epithet “Mucus.” A lady in the front row regretted wolfing her potato crisps. Otherwise, we got a hefty serve of sneers about ‘Adelaaaaaayde’ and some experiences from his recent African sojourn in ‘I’m a Celebrity – Get Me Out of Here,’ which we have not seen but understand that, along arguably with the chap from ‘Malcolm in the Middle,’ Amos was the only celebrity.
We can’t remember any jokes, of course. You had to be there. That’s what is best, and bravest, in stand-up comedy.
Continue Reading →By Tony Kushner; University of Adelaide Theatre Guild; directed by Hayley Horton – Part 1 (‘The Millennium Approaches’) 2 May 2024; Part 2 (‘Perestroika’) on 3 May 2024
The AIDS epidemic hit New York City the worst (San Francisco came second). It emerged in the early 1980s, primarily in the gay community, and became synonymous therewith, but was in no way actually so localised. Poorly understood initially by medical science, it was first tagged as Kaposi’s Sarcoma (cancerous lesions on skin, lymph nodes, mouth and other organs). Like all plagues, it caused fear, suspicion, mistrust, prejudice and panic. Lives and relationships were destroyed: human love, warmth, and touch became anathema (which has a familiar 2019-2024 ring to it).
Tony Kushner’s monumental play first appeared in the early 1990s, and already by 1994, Harold Bloom (another NY Jewish intellectual) predicted that Angels would become part of the Western literary canon. It is a remarkable but flawed piece of drama, essentially in that Kushner makes an heroic attempt to synthesize Reagan’s America through the prism of diverse and often mythological characters; its length, tendentious Brechtian declamations on ontology, and dizzying scene changes, require a blood transfusion at conclusion (pardon the pun); and it so relentlessly (but necessarily) focuses on death that it recalls Webster’s The White Devil. Also, it has more coincidences than Lantana, but here that doesn’t grate because of Kushner’s overall design, which as the full title of his play suggests, is to construct a ‘Gay Fantasia on National Themes,’ a rip on American mores during crises, suggesting the 1980s were not “Morning in America”, but the bleak dark murk of deepest night.
Summarising the scenes would take a long time. The play begins with a funeral and gets not much cheerier, Death appearing throughout, in the forms of various angels, ghosts and imaginary friends. However, much of the time, the piece is hilarious, crackling with wit, self-delusion, self-deprecation and commentary on the never-ending fraying of America. It is a theatrical piece that an acting entourage will die for. Kushner’s staging notes say: “The plays [sic] benefit from a pared-down style of presentation, with scenery kept to an evocative and informative minimum…I recommend rapid scene shifts (no blackouts!), employing the cast as well as stagehands in shifting the scene. This must be an actor-driven event…The moments of magic…are to be fully imagined and realized, as wonderful theatrical illusions—which means it’s OK if the wires show, and maybe it’s good that they do...” Here, the director has been faithful to Kushner’s admonition, with the added eerie touch of haze fx. My overall impression was that Part 1 was more effective, the resolution of various scenarios in Part 2 lacking a certain mystery.
The key figures are:
Prior Walter, young, sick, lesions showing and bleeding, difficulty walking. Scared and brave, he is magnificently played by Matthew Houston (the cast take on multiple roles);
Louis Ironson – Prior’s guilt-ridden boyfriend. Freaked-out by Prior’s disease, he flees into the arms of another and rationalises his behaviour as either courageous, or the fault of Republicans. (Beautifully played by Lee Cook);
Harper Pitt – The pill-popping Mormon housewife . She’s John on Patmos, falling back on the sharp points of her own resources after a revelation, wrestling and coming to terms with the fact that her stolid but distant husband Joe Pitt, is gay. (Standout work from Casmira Lorien);
Joe Pitt – The token conservative bloviates on ethics and faith, struggles with his sexual identity, and despite the aridity of his soul, pleads for understanding. This is a difficult character and Lindsay Prodea makes him more convincing as the story develops, when his motivations (and more) are revealed in full glory. His mixed-up world-view reminds us that New York last voted for a Republican President in 1984;
Roy Cohn – The weirdest character was in fact real, a loathsome and lethal éminence grise whose private life inverted the public one, including the concealment, bordering on denial, of his AIDS condition, which he insists is liver cancer, to preserve his reputation. His character is well drawn, albeit in grotesque caricature (and inspiringly played by Brant Eustice, showing more of Cohn’s nastiness than Nathan Lane did in the National Theatre production in London), but he feels somewhat helicoptered-in by the playwright – Cohn could fill a whole story on his own. (In mitigation of Cohn’s deserved descent to Hell, I would have had Ethel Rosenberg executed as well).
Hannah Pitt – Joe’s mother. She comes to New York after her son drunkenly comes out of the closet. She arrives to find that Joe has abandoned his wife. Kate Anolak is fine in the role and particularly good as the Rabbi, and the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg.
Belize – A former drag queen, Prior’s ex-boyfriend who remains a staunch friend. He later becomes Roy Cohn’s nurse, and the two have a marvellous fencing-duel of words. It is a vibrant performance by Eric McDowell, the only cast member who doesn’t have to affect an American accent, although the rest of the cast do fine in this regard. And the whole ensemble, in subordinate roles, is terrific.
“For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.” [The Gospel According to St. John, 5:4]. The play concludes with Prior’s recounting of the legend of the Pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem, where the sick were healed. It ends this long work on a chord of hope, which, fortunately, has turned-out for a significant majority of HIV-sufferers to be true.
Continue Reading →(Die Dreigroschenoper) Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide, 10 March 2024
It might not be opera, more cabaret Singspiel, but it was still pretty good. Brecht’s rosy worldview, his ‘Berlinized’ take on John Gay’s balladic Beggar’s Opera, was presented with great élan and sophistication under the direction of TVC’s bête noire, Barrie Kosky, with a subtly simple staging of moving Jungle-Jims, up and over which the cast nimbly climbed and clambered, and a cabaret-style spangly curtain through which heads, and sometimes feet, would peep.
Brecht’s libretto is extremely witty but it isn’t really a Marxist social satire, rather a nihilistic view of society as a sewer in which all crimes and misdemeanours should go unpunished. (It is a grim irony that the Adelaide Festival should host this Weimar-inspired piece, a city experiencing housing shortages, a per capita recession, burgeoning under-employment, political fragmentation and distrust in institutions. Incidentally, a full house included folks displaying their virtuous keffiyehs).
The excellent ensemble (see credits below) started with a bang and kept up a vigourous noise, although really, Kurt Weill’s music is rarely more than pedestrian. Highlights are “Mac the Knife,” “The Cannon Song,” “Ballad of Sexual Obsession,” “The Ballad of the Insufficiency of Human Behaviour” and the closing numbers, during which, gorgeously, a neon sign blurts from the darkness above a reprieved Macheath, stating “LOVE ME.”
The Berliner cast have a splendid time, spitting and swearing and vomiting and stabbing and declaiming. In terms of bono vox, we thought Julia Berger, as the prostitute Jenny, the best. Gabriel Schneider was charismatic and kinetic as the sociopath Macheath; Cynthia Micas as his betrothed, Polly Peachum, was fine; and Tilo Nest and Constanze Becker as Mr. and Mrs. Peachum, stylishly attired, were terrific. Kathrin Wehlisch as police chief ‘Tiger’ Brown was a buffoon, a slightly-less-nasty Pozzo.
Conductor, Piano, Harmonium Adam Benzwi
Alto Saxophone, Clarinet, Flute, Piccolo James Scannell
Soprano Saxophone, Tenor Saxophone, Baritone Saxophone Doris Decker
Trumpet Nathan Plante
Trombone, Double Bass Otwin Zipp
Drums Sebastian Trimolt
Guitar, Banjo Ralf Templin
Continue Reading →(Director Andrew Haigh)
Adam (Bill Paxton look-alike Andrew Scott) is a desolate would-be writer, living alone. After a fire alarm in his London tower block he meets Harry (Paul Mescal) who is, strangely, the only other inhabitant of the building. Harry wants to party the night away, but Adam sends him home. Soon after this, for reasons which are not clear, Adam goes to a park near his childhood home (set in the house in which director Haigh was raised) and meets his father, apparently by chance. Adam starts to spend time with his parents whom he hasn’t seen since one evening in the 1980s when he was a pre-teen. Which is unsurprising, given that they died that night. His parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) are no more surprised to see Adam than he is to see them. Mum and Dad look as they did 30 years ago, although Adam is now in his forties.
Back in the near-deserted tower block, Adam does let Harry into his flat and they take their clothes off almost immediately. (In real life do all gay men jump on each other within five minutes of meeting? Or is this just on screen? Asking for a friend). Their relationship develops into something, but it’s tepid. Neither of them seems to have anything else to do and neither is particularly appealing.
After the (obligatory) ketamine-fuelled LGBTQ+ dance-club scene, Adam becomes increasingly confused, as are we. Is he drug-addled? Mentally ill?
This is a very good film. More is going on than first appears. It is ingenious, affecting and puzzling; but it could have been a great film. The ideas and the feels are undercut by the banality of Adam’s obsession with talking to his parents non-stop about how awful it was to grow up being homosexual. These speeches are preachy and out of date, particularly given that Adam’s parents seem quite okay with his sexuality. Really, if you met your long dead parents who were now somehow here and in their thirties, wouldn’t you have something to talk to them about other than how you used to cry in your bedroom because you were bullied at school? You might, for instance, ask them where they’ve been, is there a god and how they’ve kept their hair so nice after three decades in a box.
Do take note of the shirt Harry is wearing when he first knocks on Adam’s door.
Continue Reading →By Anne Henderson (2023)
Robert Menzies and Herbert Evatt were both born before Australia was – in 1894 to be exact, in the colonies of Victoria and New South Wales respectively, but they would blossom under the soon-to-be-created Federal Commonwealth. Their natural intelligence and Victorian work ethic set them on the path to success, and to some degree, Australia became the better for their struggle, in that they brilliantly represented, and advocated for, different yet necessary principles and practices of the nation’s democracy.
Menzies went to the Victorian bar, and still in short pants lead in the Engineers’ Case (1920), a seminal constitutional decision for federalism, establishing, in Sir Owen Dixon’s words, that under the Federal Constitution, “a power to legislate with respect to a given subject enables the Parliament to make laws which, upon that subject, affect the operations of the States and their agencies.” It was unclear that an award on employers in a certain industry could bind employers in a State that were government instrumentalities. Menzies, opening the batting before the High Court on a case stated, ran the line that the interveners were to be regarded as trading rather than governmental corporations. Justice Starke said this was “nonsense.” With the impetuousness of youth, Menzies replied “Sir, I quite agree.” He submitted that if he was allowed to question and challenge earlier decisions of the Court, he could put a better argument. After retiring for a time, the Court returned, adjourned the case to allow intervention by all concerned States and a full argument, with explicit leave to challenge any earlier decision of the Court. Stirring stuff. Note that Evatt appeared as junior counsel for an opposing party. Later, Menzies entered politics on the conservative side, and became Prime Minister in 1939.
Evatt was no less distinguished. After honourable service to the NSW Bar and State Government, he was appointed (by the financially and intellectually bankrupt Scullin government, but let that pass) to the High Court (aged 36!). A man who, to borrow Gore Vidal’s phrase, lived in a rarified world of theory, he was neither popular on the Court nor a ‘team player,’ and in 1940, he resigned his commission and stood for federal parliament in 1940, in the seat of Barton, winning by a handsome margin.
There had been some previous desultory exchanges between them, but from the time of Evatt’s election, the pair found themselves in the political sphere, destined to become mortal enemies. In this compelling book, the author traverses the events whereby these two brilliant, dedicated and proud men came into war with each other, creating firestorms that sucked much oxygen out of public discourse for at least twenty years. In the final analysis, Evatt, whilst perhaps the genuine genius of the pair, lost the war because he bit-off more than he could chew, he was chronically disorganised and lacked the trust to delegate, he pursued an ideology already proved as far too altruistic for humans, and his unique talent for personal relationships made adversaries of those that could have been friends. He was also, near the end, probably certifiable, surely paranoid at the very least.
Henderson concentrates on the Big Issues where battlelines were drawn. First, the election of John Curtin in 1941 (when Evatt became both Attorney-General and External Affairs Minister: a staggeringly burdensome remit – think of Mark Dreyfus and Penny Wong in the one person – or wait, forget that – bad example). Then, Evatt’s conduct of Prime Minster Chifley’s idiotic push to nationalise Australia’s banks. WWII having concluded, undeclared WWIII started, and the Cold War covered Menzies, and especially Evatt, with its umbra. In a sense, Evatt was a man out of time by 1949: his sterling but sterile work with the United Nations, where he created a path to Universal Rights deemed essential post-Hitler, was rendered otiose by the Soviet Union’s invention of Universal Misery. His last, great, and stylish act, to lead the charge to defeat Menzies’ cynical attempt to dissolve the Australian Communist Party by legislation, turned out to be a good intention leading him down to political Hell.
The Australian people tend to be suspicious of government overreach. They turfed-out Chifley’s government over bank nationalisation, a national coal strike, post-war rationing and an ambiguous approach to the iron curtain. But then Menzies arguably stepped over the line himself. He sought to banish the Australian Communist Party, by legislation, and if this failed, by Constitutional change. One suspects that, like the Abba song, he felt he would win if he lost. For though Evatt opposed the bill, Menzies was re-elected in 1951; though Menzies lost the 1951 referendum to ban the ACP, the result was to tar Evatt as ‘soft on communism,’ split the Labor Party and consign it to the wilderness for 23 years.
Let’s take some samples from Anne Henderson’s book as to these issues:
“Once in the position of prime minister a second time. lessons learned over decades saw Menzies become a careful strategist…believing in a style of delegation that left his minsters free to deal with their departments without interference. By contrast, Evatt was a chaotic manager…He expected to be central to all business.”
“While recognising Evatt’s achievements and the energy he expended in this, Hasluck found Evatt to be “emotionally simple and intellectually complex”…”
“In the heat of battle, so to speak, Menzies and his colleagues had not considered the extent of the (CPA ban) bill’s assault on, possibly, ordinary Australians…Menzies was forced to advise the House of Representatives on 9 May that among the list of 53 communist union officials he had given names for in a speech to parliament on 28 April there were five persons who were not communists.” (Reversing the onus of proof is always attractive to the persecutor, but likely to cause injustice).
When Evatt appeared before the High Court in the Bank Nationalisation case, he started off by asking two of the judges to recuse themselves because their relatives had bank shares. And though he then addressed the Court, ponderously and in his usual shrill voice, for 18 days, as David Marr observed, quoted in the book, “He was returning to the High Court which had been happy to see him go seven years before and the animosities had not subsided with time.” (The following year, 1949, Evatt bent the ear of the Privy Council for 22 days – to no effect).
Menzies told a journalist, ahead of the 1954 election: “I would leave politics this 1954 but for Dr Evatt. He’s a menace to Australia and he must be kept out of office by hook or by crook.”
Evatt’s promises to anti-communist Catholic power-broker B.A. Santamaria “…was a shopping list to die for among Movement supporters but it did not fool Santamaria who felt it rather disgusting and went home and told his wife he had met a man without a soul.”
Labor was tipped to win the 1954 election but Menzies, it was claimed, pulled ‘2 rabbits out of the hat’: first, he hosted the newly crowned Elizabeth in February and March 1954. And then, there was the Petrov affair. Vladimir Petrov, Consul at the Soviet Embassy in Canberra, had defected and Menzies took the opportunity, while Evatt was out of town, to announce an espionage Royal Commission: two classic ‘wedges”, even though it seems Menzies may not have planned it so neatly. Henderson writes: “…after three days of strongly supporting the government’s stand on Petrov and the commission…Evatt launched an attack on Menzies…which accused the PM of “sly insinuations” and “making a crude attempt” to disparage the previous administration’s Security service handling.” The economy had picked up and that played to the Liberal’s strength. But it would be hard to discount the effect of the photo, prominently published, of a distraught Mrs. Petrov (one shoe missing), being hustled to a plane at Mascot airport by Soviet goons.
Evatt made things much worse in the wake of the Petrov affair. When the Royal Commission gathered speed, it was revealed that several of his staff had been involved in Soviet shenanigans. And then Evatt decided, in August 1954, to appear before the Commission as counsel. He should have kept a 1,000 miles away. His splenetic, paranoid and bizarre performance was seen as evidence that he was having a nervous breakdown, “shouting his conviction that the documents in the case [were] concoctions.” The Commission removed him as an advocate. Henderson cites Ligertwood J stating: “I have read all the documents, the Moscow letters and any other relevant material and, I repeat, every one shows how fantastic is the allegation that they were forged for the purpose of injuring the Labor Party of Australia.” “The other justices immediately concurred.” Then Evatt ‘doubled-down’ and spoke at length in the Parliament, again ventilating his conspiracy theory. Menzies played him on the break, replying mildly (but lethally) that the House had just witnessed a “very uncommon privilege…[to having] heard counsel who has unsuccessfully advanced certain arguments before a tribunal have the opportunity to advance them for a second time before a tribunal which has not heard the witnesses and has not read the detailed evidence…That is something I cannot remember in my fairly long experience of public affairs.”
Then Evatt, seeking evidence relevant papers had been fabricated, wrote in 1955 to what he thought an impeccable source as to their dubious provenance: Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov. Enough said.
It would have been an appropriate ‘Beria Moment’ for the Labor Party to have had Evatt metaphorically executed, especially when he called for the expulsion of a subversive element – Victorian Catholics, treacherous anti-communists or ‘traitors’ as he called them. A dumb, fascistic move, revealing an authoritarian streak that had previously broken from cover only occasionally. Henderson speculates on whether Deputy Arthur Calwell could have calmed matters, or knocked Evatt off. Fred Daly, that classic insider, was scornful of Calwell: “pathetic…hesitant, uncertain and waiting for Evatt’s job”. The Victorian branch of the party was purged, a fatal schism was created, which in the author’s view, was brought about because Evatt was at base, “an intense secularist,” anti-Catholic more than anti-communist, a naive internationalist who forgot, or never learned, that politics is above all local.
After more election defeats, where the party still could not bring itself to defenestrate its “brilliant boy,” Evatt was offered a slot as Chief Justice of the NSW Supreme Court by State Labor, whereupon he left the political stage in 1960. But Menzies, perhaps remembering his undertaking to keep Evatt out of power ‘by hook or by crook,’ may not have relaxed his vigil totally until Evatt died in November 1965. Menzies retired as PM in January 1966.
Continue Reading →