Away reached the dubious status of ‘Australian Classic’ in a remarkably short period of time. It has become so ubiquitous that I would hazard a guess that fully two thirds of the Australian audience for this production who are under thirty will have been involved with the play either as performers, audience, or students. In the keynote address (‘The Agony and the Agony’) at the National Play Festival that Michael Gow gave in July 2016, required reading for anyone interested in theatre, he describes his ambivalent feelings about having written a work that has become a perennial set text – a sure way of having the life drained out of it. He also says, ‘for me Away is a play about death. In fact it’s an AIDS play, though I didn’t know it at the time.’

For many of us who saw the original 1986 Peter Kingston Griffin Theatre production and the equally magnificent 1987 STC one directed by Richard Wherrett, and who were, in those terrible years, either coming to terms with our own rapidly approaching mortality or helping others to deal with theirs, this aspect of the play came over with devastating force. The acceptance of the inevitability of death which the characters achieve by the play’s conclusion was something that seemed to us very remote but the play’s unsentimental compassion made it appear attainable. All of which is prelude to a confession. A confession that a reviewer should not be making. Away is a play about which I find it impossible to be entirely objective. (Can a reviewer ever be entirely objective? Discuss.)