Is Don, Is Bad

Last week I described how much I enjoyed Don Parties On, David Williamson’s follow up to Don’s Party. My pleasure was in its unintended exposure of the left as hypocritical and morally repellant. These are so seldom shown you have to take your opportunities when they come. 

The play gives permission to laugh at a man dying of emphysema because he’s rich and votes for the Libs. There is the honest confession of a Labor Parliamentarian who had gone through years of clinical depression brought on by an abortion, a bit of theatre so far outside standard issue left agenda that there is literally nothing comparable anywhere. When Don’s son decides to run off and leave his wife and children, he is lectured on the need to stay together for the kids. And finally, Don’s grubby wish to run off and leave his wife of forty years because he has never lost his desire for a woman he had had an affair with decades before, is given ultra sympathetic treatment. 

On two counts we find conservative…