DIRECTOR'S NOTE
Travelling North has been called “a wonderfully human work.” First performed at the Nimrod Theatre in 1979, it followed Williamson’s success with The Removalists, Don’s Party, The Department and The Club. It has been said that Williamson’s earlier plays are largely about men in their public context. This play “is one of Williamson’s first to deal with issues of family and responses to death.” In this play we hear more of the voices of women, specifically in their private contexts.
The play is set over the four years from 1969 to 1972. It is about love in Autumn, or Twilight – or later in life. And just like love at any time – it’s not easy. Frank and Francis want to live their life on their own terms: as Frank says, “It’s our lives, after all.” But is this really possible? Because it’s not just about their relationship, but about the way their new life interacts with their families and friends. There is a twenty-year gap between septuagenarian Frank and Frances when the two fall in love. It all begins in typical optimism: they will travel all over the North, they will “lead the ideal life. We’ll read, fish, laze, love and lie in the sun.” But Frank soon becomes ill and Frances, who gets restless when she stays in one spot, is unhappy. Frances’ two daughters, with whom she has a strong bond, live a long way away in Melbourne and continue to make great emotional and physical demands on her.
Although the older generation is the main focus of the play, the younger generation, Frances’ two daughters and Frank’s son and daughter are part of the network of important influences. Each of the daughters feels quite differently about their parents’ relationship, and we get to know, and partially understand, them as individuals. So, by bringing the younger generation into the network of relationships, Williamson broadens the focus of the play.
There are no role models in this play. No-one is particularly good; no-one is particularly bad. Everyone is very human. Quite real and very believable. Even those we find lovable, this is despite their flaws. Frank, for instance, is a self-opinionated, forceful, ex-engineer who is used to having his own way and who even his friends find hard to take. Frances, in a fit of exasperation, calls him “a rude, arrogant, despotic old bully” but she and his friends still love him. Frances, herself, although a milder and seemingly kinder person, has made many unwise, questionable, self-serving decisions in her life.
The 60s and 70s were a time of great change in Australian society and attitudes, and although the play touches on key events and ideas of the time – such as the Vietnam War and Women’s Liberation – it doesn’t focus on them. But they are there, nonetheless, and I find the end of the play highly significant: Frances raises her champagne glass and drinks to her future travelling further north, now free from the emotional ties – even subjugation - of her family and her man.
—Cate Clelland
