David Williamson was born in Melbourne and brought up in Bairnsdale, Victoria. He graduated from Monash University in mechanical engineering in 1964. During his time at university he wrote satirical sketches for student revues and for the Emerald Hill Theatre Company. He worked as a design engineer for General Motors Holden in 1965 and from 1966 to 1972 he lectured in thermodynamics and social psychology at Swinburne College of Technology. In 1968, his first play, The Indecent Exposure of Anthony East (about a corporate executive who writes romantic fiction) was presented at the University of Melbourne 's Union theatre by the Tin Alley Players.
From 1970 to 1972 David Williamson was a writer and actor with La Mama Company and the Australian
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Satire is unforgiving; realism is all-forgiving; and David Williamson has always attempted to merge the two, portraying people as wicked but pardonable. The more you get to know the baseness of the motives of each character, the more empathy you are intended to feel for them, as you come to realise that all people, even ourselves, despite all actions, generally mean well. As far as it goes, the good guys aren’t very good and the bad guys always fall short of the true evilness which they, in theory, are capable of.
Many of Williamson’s plays start out as toughly satirical but end up merging into roughly sentimental, with even his basest, most deviant characters always having a comfortable, revealing scene; Even his nicest characters will admit to unworthy thoughts and ignoble desires.
This play is a classic comedy of manners, with an almost humanist reference point. Underlying it all is a romantic and even sentimental love of art. Simone’s constant claim, in spite of all her contradictory behaviour, is that she actually likes the million-dollar painting much more than the people she is actually trying to sell it to. The wives, Mindy and Felicity, each in their confused and oppressed ways, actually want the painting, not for it’s dollar value, but because they find it beautiful. Simone’s relationship with her husband Garry anchors the human side of the comedy slightly, but even he is slightly neurotic in his own quiet way, obsessed with not losing his apartment. Like the others’ he comes good