Melvyn Morrow's Vice takes a message-free look at sex abuse in schools

By Elissa Blake
WA Today
April 21, 2015

http://www.watoday.com.au/entertainment/theatre/melvyn-morrows-vice-takes-a-messagefree-look-at-sex-abuse-in-schools-20150421-1mj7fs.html

Ben McCann plays a schoolboy in Vice.

Set in an exclusive Catholic boys' school rocked by accusations of sexual abuse, a new play, Vice, which is about to open at the King Street Theatre in Newtown, is an investigation into the "blurring of borders", playwright Melvyn Morrow says.

"It's a frightful, delicate and tragically topical subject and when you read about these things happening, everybody feels like they are an expert on the subject because they went to school as well," Morrow explains. "I thought it would be interesting to show what life is like in a school and how teachers deal with moments when they are, for one reason or another, compromised."

Morrow, 73, is best known for his work on The Mavis Bramston Show in the 1960s and the scripts for the jukebox musicals Dusty and Shout!.

He is also a career teacher, having taught English and drama in Europe, England and Sydney at St Ignatius' College, Riverview, which was recently subject to accusations of sexual abuse levelled by a former student dating back some 30 years.

Morrow says Vice's portrayal of a school community in crisis is not drawing on real-life incidents at particular schools.

"I'm not stupid or rich enough to put up with being sued," he says. "But I've taken bits and pieces from different places and invented my own characters. It's not true, but it's truthful."

Vice will not offer its audience a black and white, right and wrong portrait of school life.

"When you read about another abuse case in the paper, people tend to jump to conclusions," he says. "I want to show what life is like in a closed world. The play is somewhere between a whodunit and a whodunwhat, with the audience as the investigator."

In the play, a vice-principal with an eye on the top job is confronted by rumours that his drama teacher wife (played by Margi de Ferranti) has been intimately involved with a precocious year 12 student.

There is a confusion of roles at the heart of Vice, the production's director, Elaine Hudson, says.

"You have a central character who is parentless – his mother is away a lot, his father is in hospital – and you have married teachers who are themselves childless," she explains. "And, at the same time, there is this analogy with [Shakespeare's] The Tempest going on. It's a heightened reality rather than a documentary about a scandal at a Catholic boys' school. It's Mel's imaginative take on his own experience [as a teacher]."

There is no moral message to take home, Morrow says.

"I loathe messages," he says. "I think the audience will come in with very clear and correctly angry views about the abuse of power. But by the second act, I think the audience will be divided and start to judge characters differently. The aim of the play is not to preach, it's to ask, 'what do you think'?"