'A battler at a Tasmanian racecourse finds ten shillings in the dirt. He puts it on a 12-1 long shot, and when it romps home he’s off to the mainland, and the Packer Dynasty is born. Fathers and sons across generations, through war, the Depression, technological change. The family myth grows with the influence, and each son feels the weight of time, of power. But now it’s the 21st century. Newspapers, magazines, broadcast TV – what are they? Now it’s time for entertainment through your phone. And back to laying bets on long shots.
'A deeply researched, muscular work from Tommy Murphy (Mark Colvin’s Kidney, Holding the Man), Packer & Sons puts on stage the men who have loomed large over Sydney for nearly 100 years.
'Plotted around the transitions of power from father to son over four generations, this is a play about power and what it does to the men who wield it.'
Source: Belvoir Street Theatre.
Supported by Australian Writers’ Guild’s David Williamson Prize.
Produced by Belvoir Street Theatre, 16 November to 22 December 2019, Upstairs Theatre.
Director: Eamon Flack.
Cast: John Howard, Josh McConville, John Gaden, and Brandon McClelland.
'You would have to be living under a rock the size of Uluru not to be aware of the reassessment of the masculine sense of dominance and entitlement that is sweeping the Western world at the moment. From an American president who has openly boasted of assaulting women to a member of the royal family who, in an interview about his relationship with a notorious paedophile, blithely ignores the damage that this man and his cohorts inflicted on young women, we have seen a stunning lack of empathy towards the less powerful and well connected. In the business world, some consider this to be a requisite for success. It has become something of a truism to claim, as does Jon Ronson in his controversial book The Psychopath Test, that a high percentage of CEOs have psychopathic tendencies.'(Introduction)
'One of the nation's best-known media dynasties comes under the microscope in a new play, writes Rosemary Neill'
'The curtain call for a new play about the fabled Packer dynasty is instructive.' (Summary)
'One of the nation's best-known media dynasties comes under the microscope in a new play, writes Rosemary Neill'
'You would have to be living under a rock the size of Uluru not to be aware of the reassessment of the masculine sense of dominance and entitlement that is sweeping the Western world at the moment. From an American president who has openly boasted of assaulting women to a member of the royal family who, in an interview about his relationship with a notorious paedophile, blithely ignores the damage that this man and his cohorts inflicted on young women, we have seen a stunning lack of empathy towards the less powerful and well connected. In the business world, some consider this to be a requisite for success. It has become something of a truism to claim, as does Jon Ronson in his controversial book The Psychopath Test, that a high percentage of CEOs have psychopathic tendencies.'(Introduction)
'The curtain call for a new play about the fabled Packer dynasty is instructive.' (Summary)
