The Sublime

Brendan Cowell has penned a relevant and controversial play for the Melbourne Theatre Company, his script a fusion of familiar football scandals ripped from the headlines and scattered into a story for the stage.

The Sublime is a boisterous and surprisingly absorbing work for its simplicity; comprising three monologues that run rapidly over one another and tell the tale of an off-season trip to Thailand that takes a sinister turn. Brothers Dean and Liam are passionate football stars on the rise, bonded by blood but claimed by separate sports, AFL and NRL respectively. Both, however, are obsessed with athletic glory, superstardom and the sheer holiness of their game. This holiness is put into question when the violence and casual misogyny that has been building through the play leads to a rape.

The script collides with the rage inducing yet inevitable cover up and sickening ‘boys will be boys’ mythology to put the spotlight on the pervasive sexist and violent culture in football that is left uncritically examined in society. At this point, Cowell takes the plot on various tangents, trying to incorporate too many stories into his narrative, which obscures the critical argument in the work.

The magnitude of what happens in Thailand is impetus enough to construct the argument against this culture. This, however, mirrors a point made well in the work – the problematic ease to which we are seduced by a story rather than the truth and its consequences.