The Governor’s Family

It’s 1897.  in Government House, The Governor of New South Wales, Howard Mountgarret (played with a good emotional range by Peter Holland) faces some difficulties as the Irish malcontents — spurred on, if he only knew it, by his brash headstrong cross-dressing socialist feminist daughter, Lara (Caitlin Baker) — are fomenting rebellion.  As well, Mountgarret’s hostile wife, Helena (Antonia Kitzel), displaced from her British aristocratic environment and relying on laudanum to keep her son, Gerald (Robbie Haltiner), calm and under control, is becoming increasingly erratic.

Against this background, Mountgarret shelters a young Aboriginal woman, Frances Pod (Kiara Tomkins), who has been gang-raped by, amongst others, brothers of the leader of the incipient rebellion, Tammey Lee Mackenzie (Jack Casey).  Mountgarret’s firm stance that the rapists should face the consequences of their actions regardless of their own colour and that of their victim, principled though it be, may just bring the colony’s deeply entrenched discontent to boiling point.

Employing an surfeit of casual villainies to represent colonial excess, and anachronisms to represent change, The Governor’s Family is by no means a believable play, and it is easy to understand why it has not been performed in Canberra since its initial performance in 1996: it would take supreme direction and acting, not to say some simplification, to imbue it with emotional genuineness.  As it stands, the play certainly is interesting, though, and raises every issue imaginable.  You name it; it’s in The Governor’s Family: varieties of illegitimate love, stolen children, prostitution, mental illness, drug addiction, cross-dressing, socialism, arson, death, sadomasochism, vigilantism, racism, feminism, capital punishment… and they’re merely the amusements of the family itself.

The play moves from woe to blow making use of a versatile revolving set (of which better use might have been made to cut the number of clunky exits) and good use of authentic costumery.  Jack Casey, as the rebel Irishman Tammey Lee Mackenzie, was a highlight.  With an absolutely genuine rich Irish accent, and exhibiting a talent for injecting precisely the emotional pitch to suit his lines, Casey gave a standout performance not by trying too hard but by understanding and truly inhabiting the character he played.

John P. Harvey

Image: Peter Holland and Antonia Kitzel, in The Governor's Family.  Photographer: John P. Harvey.