Review by Peter Boyle
The Spook
Written by Melissa Reeves
Directed by Neil Armfield
With Eugenia Fragos, Russell Kiefel, Tom Long and Steve Le Marquand
Tuesday 6.30pm, Wednesday to Friday 8pm, Saturday 2pm and 8pm Sunday 5pm
Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney until December 22
$45/$30
Melbourne playwright Melissa Reeves' 2003 comedy-with-a-message is timely. Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack in the US, some $3 billion has been spent across all arms of government in Australia on "anti-terrorism" measures. According to the recent report by Philip Flood on intelligence agencies, 3000 people now work in the six Australian intelligence organisations, 50% more than three years ago. Spook numbers are still rising and a public appeal for recruits was launched a week ago.
In The Spook, Tom Long (famous for his role as the court clerk in the ABC TV series Sea Change), plays Martin Porter, a feverish young ASIO recruit sent to infiltrate the South Bendigo Communist Party in 1965. It looks like a schoolchild's game, but when Martin's sordid reports on this beleaguered little bunch of lefties is put to use by his spymasters, he is horrified.
Apparently, the play was inspired by a true story, and I believe it. The real efforts of ASIO and other spook operations mounted over the last three decades against left groups in this country does not lag far behind in the comedy stakes. The accounts of ASIO's plants who admitted spying on organisations supporting Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly and the bulging files obtained by activists under the Freedom of Information laws (these may go soon, if PM John Howard has his way) testify the grubby careers of generations of Martins.
The thin ranks of the South Bendigo Communist Party posed no terrorist threat. The comrades fretted about declining Tribune sales and the local Maoist's Chinese slide nights. Martin was their only recent recruit and they were so happy that Martin was the last person the comrades wanted to suspect when the hand of ASIO was revealed.
Patterns of laughter revealed the presence of a few old Communist Party members in the audience on the night I attended. So The Spook offers extra mirth for old and new lefties who will recognise some familiar scenes.
The Spook is a funny-sad story with a serious warning for us today. Law-abiding lefties are still being spied on and with new technologies (a recent electronic scan of the Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly office for bugs was a noisy affair) but today's spooks are focusing on the Muslim communities. And they are doing more than spying.
Reporting on an approval for the Australian Security Intelligence Service to once again engage in "special operations", the November 15 Sydney Morning Herald noted that while this spook agency is banned from engaging in paramilitary activities or "violence against the person", a footnote in the Flood Report adds that "This ... does not prevent ASIS from being involved with the planning or undertaking of [violent] activities ... by other organisations ... provided that staff members or agents of ASIS do not undertake those activities."
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, November 24, 2004.
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