Money & Friends

Written by David Williamson

Directed by Bob Philippe

July 2010

                With performances from Micaela Elphick, Craig Howe, Tim Williams, Lesley Bloomer, Peter Firminger, Rosie Glover, Darren Philip,                   Karen Butler-Hues and Dain Southwell

“Back in march 199 that i first directed a David Williamson play for Valley Artists. it was the extraordinarily funny and confronting The Removalist’s – a play that still gives me goose bumps whenever i recall it. Williamson had burst onto the scene in the early seventies with ‘The coming of Stork’, ‘Don’s Party’ and the brash ‘Removalists’. When we played ‘The Removalists’ twenty years after its writing the issues raised in it were still relevant to the day. Over the next twenty years Williamson became Australia’s foremost playwright and this play Money & Friends is regarded as the cleverest and wittiest of his works. Once again Valley Artists are producing his play well after it was first performed in 1991 yet again the issues are spookily relevant to today. History does repeat itself. Australians discovered in the 1890’s that property can indeed fall dramatically and many were wiped out. 100 years later in the 1980’s it was possible to borrow almost 100% of the value of a property because bankers could not conceive of it failing. Sitting here in 2010 it all sounds a bit familiar. Money & Friends is another funny and confronting play. Materialism and ideals clash. I am very Pleased to revisit David Williamson who as always demonstrates his acute observation of the Australian character, which is another thing that seems to stand the test of time.”

Bob Philippe