The year was 1996. Suddenly, after four decades of relatively peaceful house-dwelling I found myself in a flat situation, surrounded by other flatees, flatites, or whatever the appropriate term is for those so flattened by life they have to move into a rented unit. It was a life-changing experience. Instead of listening to Chopin or Benny Goodman at night I was treated to expletives in seven different octaves from the unit above. When I complained I was told to talk softly, I’d wake their baby up. Someone from somewhere in the block decided it was their job to clear my mailbox. I’d find my letters opened and abandoned under the staircase. One night a mad Irish woman came knocking on every door asking: “Is this where Michael lives?” I told her I was sometimes known as Michael. She peered drunkenly into my eyes and told me I couldn’t be because she didn’t know me. It was all a new experience for my seven-year-old daughter Jessie, so I bought her a dog as a sort of solace. We had to secret him in and out at night so we wouldn’t be kicked out. The landlord, in fact, was a very gentle Jewish man, who took the frequent trashing of his units with remarkable tolerance. When I commiserated with him after one outrage, he favoured me with that time-honoured Levite shrug and said: “It is not easy being rich.”
The list of iniquities he and we suffered could fill a novel. Instead, I wrote a play. This play. It is, I believe, a play that touches a chord with everyone except Alpha males and dominatrix women. The two characters, Tim and Diane, are not based on anyone, but they could, I believe, be almost anyone. They are loners doing their best to deal with their loneliness in a city of teeming millions. Both their lives have contracted, through no great fault of their own, to the boundaries of their units. Because their lives have become so circumscribed they react with all the more intensity to what happens around them – the snores, the ranting, the songs, the noises of the vacuum cleaner/TV/radio, the smells, weird laughter, gnashing of teeth.
Oh, and one other thing. We are dealing with serious issues here – loneliness, paranoia, obsession, regret. But I believe the most serious way to deal with serious issues is to laugh….Enjoy. unit46.com.au
