Saint Honey and Oh David, Are You There?

by Paul Ritchie

124 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1968

About the author

Australian playwright, painter, and novelist.

http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming...

Reviews

[Ronald Morton · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I’d noted in my review of The Protagonist that particular book was turned into a play after its publication. That play – Saint Honey – is the first of the two Ritchie plays included here. The play version of The Protagonist hews pretty closely to it’s source material, with two notable changes – first, the son (Jim) is never present on stage throughout the play, and is a much more minor character (he’s only referenced as being in bed, and being of poor health, he has basically no other defining characteristics in the play); second, the events that close that novel are different than the events that close the book (though the overall disposition of Alf, Ted, Honey, Dot, and Moll are basically unchanged). I thought this worked really well as a play – the dialogue and character interactions were the highlight of the novel for me, and this disposes of basically everything but those; but I don’t necessarily feel like the play adds anything to the novel. It’s an interesting complimentary read, and really one could read either and get a fairly similar experience.

The second play here – “Oh David, Are You There” – is a short one act play. It is considerably more absurd than “Saint Honey” – there are only three “characters” (really it’s more accurate to say there are only three actors) but they appear to change perspective/character throughout the play. This is never explicitly stated, but statements made by the characters (specifically the Man and the Youth) would tend to indicate that they are portraying different individuals as slight scene changes occur. The stage directions are sparse though, so my interpretation could be flawed here. I really enjoyed this brief play – it’s pretty sad though – as I like absurdity in most things.