This racist thug is still beyond redemption

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NORM ET AHMEDLEnox Theater, November 16 Until November 20 ★★★ ½

This revival has Norm wearing a t-shirt that looks like Scott Morrison’s mask, although Norm’s t-shirt has “Australia” written on it, in case someone is a bit slow with the flags. Maybe Morrison’s mask has “Australia” on it too – tucked under its chin, like a sender’s address on the back of an envelope. By a strange coincidence, Norm, a practitioner with a hostile worldview and a deep-rooted mistrust of outsiders, came to life in Alex Buzo’s first play the same year Morrison was born: 1968.

Ahmed verbally dances around Norm, almost bathing him and cleansing him in good manners.Credit: Becky Matthews

Buzo understood the inner workings of Australian culture; a fascination with warts and everything tinged with tenderness. This is why Norm is such an enduring character: Buzo doesn’t hate his racist, hot-tempered, stubborn, and pugnacious creation. He gives him a soft side and a warm side and lets him entertain us with rabid colloquialisms, that an unloved tall guy is “a long, thin trail of pelican shit.”

Norm needed a victim and Buzo bequeathed him Ahmed, a Pakistani studying humanities. Rightly suspicious, Ahmed dances verbally around Norm, bathing and cleansing him almost in good manners, except that Norm is beyond redemption, and Ahmed has his own agenda: to study, then return to his native Pakistan. like a false avenger against privilege. and corruption.

This Australian Theater Live production has Laurence Coy revisiting the role of Norm and Aarne Neeme revisiting the role of director (assisted by Terence Clarke). The frame was moved over twenty years or so, so instead of having been in Tobruk, Norm is now a Vietnam veteran. Coy fully personifies Norm’s stocky, nugget belligerence, though his favorite hands-on-hip confrontation position could have been alternated with defensive crossed arms at times.

But as the small 45-minute play progressed it became more and more convincing, which is crucial, or his final assault on Ahmed – barely a spoiler 53 years later – would appear to come out of nowhere. , rather than a bubbling snake pit. perceived injustices. Rajan Velu, meanwhile, creates a worthy Ahmed, who lets us know he’s one step ahead of Norm (at least until the brutal end) without letting Norm know. The great sadness of this pivotal work of Australian theater is that Norm is no less grotesque and no less believable than he was in 1968.

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