Ned Hirst

A few years ago, I overheard an antiquarian bookseller tell one of his customers that while he didn’t mind reading, he was really more interested in the “book as object”. I was reminded of this while reading Angela O’Keeffe’s third novel, Phantom Days, in which one of the two principal narrators is a book. The narrators in question, named simply Book, is not a novel or a narrative but a particular object.

When The Wharf Revue had its first season, Australia was less than halfway through the Howard years. As the program for this final edition, aptly called The End of the Wharf As We Know it, says “we’ve seen seven Australian Prime Ministers, eight British leaders, five US Presidents and, funnily enough, only two Russian Presidents”. The show itself has been through changes as well.

A ‘McGuffin’, as enthusiasts of Alfred Hitchcock can tell you, is a plot device that relies on the motivation of a character to propel the story. Typically, the McGuffin the characters are pursuing is something without intrinsic value, but which is extremely important to them. In Sam O’Sullivan’s new play, McGuffin is also the name of a small Australian town, where a new mayor is about to be elected by the council’s eight members.