A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post responding to an article about Hilary Glow's new book, Power Plays: Australian Theatre and the Public Agenda, out from Currency Press. In particular, I was puzzled by Glow's observation that theatre had become less political in the Howard era, since it seemed to me that, on the contrary, it has become more so. To quote me:

What's shifted is the idea that theatre is primarily a socio-political document, and primarily the home of naturalism. The focus has moved from issue-based plays to a more multivalent awareness that representation itself, in this media-saturated world, is a deeply political issue, and that it is not nearly enough merely to state the issues. ...Puzzling over the claim that theatre is less political, when it is so manifestly not the case, I suspect that this shift away from naturalistic issue-based plays is the change that Glow notes, and mistakes for a lack of political engagement.

In the ensuing discussion, Ben Ellis, one of the playwrights interviewed for the Power Plays, pointed out, very reasonably, that Glow has every right to set her terms of discussion. "I think," he said, "that Hilary's choices allow her arguments about politics and theatre to be focused." And of course, it was unfair to speculate without having read the book.

Well, now I have read the book: and then I re-read my earlier post and thought, damn right. But I have promised to discuss Power Plays, so I will, though I confess to some reluctance. I should point out at the outset that my response is no reflection on any of the playwrights mentioned in this book; that would be another post.

I tried, Ben, I really tried. It is only fair to read any book on its own terms, and I did make a brave effort. My problems begin with Glow's defining of her choices and her definitions of important terms. Her argument is so muddy, so riven with self-contradiction or received assumption, that it almost makes no sense at all. If you are to argue with something, you need an argument to argue with. I disagree, for example, with Michael Billington on many salient points, but Billington always creates an intellectual structure with which it's possible to disagree. And besides, he's a pleasure to read. I don't feel any such clarity about Glow's book.

My problems with Power Plays are on two levels. On one, I disagree with almost every critical assumption about writing and politics and theatre that Glow makes in this book. On the other, quite aside from my own take on these things, the book makes an argument that is often incoherent, and reaches conclusions that are often, on inspection, disappointingly banal.

It's the kind of critical writing about theatre that makes me deeply depressed. It demonstrates the pedestrian ideological mindset and intellectual shallowness that strangled Australian theatre through the 80s and 90s. It is hard to know how to begin to talk about it, partly because its argument is so unclear; so I thought I'd just briefly pull out some individual points.

Power Plays discusses primarily the work of eight playwrights - Stephen Sewell, Hannie Rayson, Katherine Thompson, Andrew Bovell, Ben Ellis, Reg Cribb, Wesley Enoch and Patricia Cornelius - whom Glow interviewed for the book. But she by no means confines her discussion of political theatre to these playwrights: in fact, there is a dizzying sampling of Australian plays and playwrights discussed in this book, from Richard Frankland to Michael Gurr, from Oriel Grey to Jack Hibberd.

Taking a leaf out of Leonard Radic's Contemporary Australian Drama, Glow approaches theatre primarily as a means of tracking social history: "This book contends," she says, "that the Australian theatre of the last decade has been a good place to find out 'what is really happening'." And she is concerned with plays that, as she puts it, reflect a "critical nationalism", which works "against the grain" of John Howard's vision of "One Australia". The writers of these plays "insist", she says, "that their highest motivation is to provide politically informed debate on key issues in the public domain". She is not writing a history of all political theatre, and she is not writing a history of performance.

The problems begin when she starts to adumbrate her definition of "mainstream". She is concerned with "mainstream" playwrights "whose work is performed in and by the leading state-subsidised theatres in Australia" to "middle-class, aging" audiences. "Mainstream" plays are further defined as naturalistic, character-based dramas: they alone "engage with forums of power" and reach a national audience.

Nothing in the book answers my earlier questions about this definition of "mainstream", which I might as well repeat.

Surely the book is making a self-fulfilling argument in accepting those assumed limitations? The STC has been hosting things like Howard Barker's Victory, or Kosky's The Lost Echo. Benedict Andrews's production of The Season at Sarsaparilla critiqued modes of perception in its design and direction. And the politics in next year's STC program is quite difficult to escape, although at least a third of it eschews the naturalistic model of "unified narrative, psychologically plausible characters and emotional engagement" (although I always hope for emotional engagement). Which at the least brings into question the idea that the formal choice of naturalism has to be observed in order to be programmed.

The mix gets more complex when you look at all the theatre companies supported by the Major Performing Arts Board, which include the Malthouse and Company B, as well as Bell Shakespeare and all the State companies, and if you include the Melbourne Festival.

The examples I've noted seem to me to be quite noticeable eruptions of political critique in mainstream venues that, yes, absolutely have to get those bums on seats, but are still exploring work that reaches beyond the model of dramatic naturalism. Isn't an important part of this discussion that the parameters of the "mainstream" have noticeably been changing over the past few years?

This insistence on a very limited view of "mainstream" theatre - and the associated claims for its political significance, which underlie this book's argument - is a critical weakness. Even on her own terms, Glow uses "mainstream" very loosely: sometimes, as in the introduction, "mainstream" becomes a synonym for "play". It's muddied further by Glow's many discussions of independent theatre or independently produced plays, such as Ilbijerri Theatre, The Keene/Taylor Theatre Project or Melbourne Workers Theatre. Why insist so strongly on the definition of "mainstream" in the first place if, in the body of the book, it means so little? It is hard to see it as anything more than a rhetorical claim.

The definition of "political" is similarly problematic. After some discussion of the difficulty of defining political theatre, Glow accepts that political in this context means "the interrogation of systems of power". This might work if the book were more aware of, and interrogated, the systems of power at work in Australian theatre, but these remain largely unaddressed.

Glow has, for example, some strange ideas about agency: she says several times that writers "choose" to be mainstream playwrights. Hannie Rayson, it seems, "chooses" to have her plays performed at the MTC, rather than, say, at La Mama (oddly, given its noble history of political theatre, not mentioned in this book). Even the briefest consideration suggests that it is the MTC that chooses, otherwise we'd have mainstream playwrights coming out of our ears. No doubt this confusion stems from Glow's conflation of a formal style - naturalistic plays - with her definition of a category of theatre - theatre made in special buildings for middle-class audiences. But it is indicative of a general fuzziness.

Worse, this definition of the political as interrogating systems of power could be applied to almost every play ever written. Glow localises it by bringing in the notion of "critical nationalism": she is concerned with plays that argue against the prevailing nationalism promoted by the Howard Government. The danger of Glow's argument becoming purely reactionary ought to be obvious; especially if, as is widely expected, Howard gets voted out in a couple of weeks.

It is also very parochial: our theatre only counts as political in this purview if it explicitly addresses our "Australianness". There is no discussion of political theatre writing here in any wider context: you will look in vain for any references to Edward Bond, or Howard Brenton, or Augusto Boal, or even Bertolt Brecht. (David Hare gets a couple of mentions, but only because he visited Australia, and Samuel Beckett gets a very small guernsey in a discussion on Ben Ellis). One very serious problem with this book is that, while it might have a lot of breadth in the range of Australian theatre it discusses, it has hardly any depth at all.

There are other strange acrobatics. Glow has already claimed that theatre's highest good is as a public forum for informed political discussion. She has a fair bit of trouble squaring this instrumental view of art with her own objections to the equally instrumentalist economic rationalist model that she objects to from the Howard Government, but solves the contradiction by ignoring it. Instrumentalism is, it seems, ok if in the service of one kind of politics, but not in another.

Likewise, Glow quotes Terry Eagleton on ideology, which he says constructs a "reassuringly pliable" view of the world, and then speaks of theatre's capacity to unsettle ideological frameworks; but she nowhere questions the ideology adumbrated in the book. And this is an avowedly ideological argument, as expressive of a heterodoxy as anything it argues against.

I finished Power Plays with the gloomy thought that this book reduces theatre and art as effectively as any argument by Andrew Bolt: it employs the same parameters of discussion, and merely mirrors the effect - left wing, instead of right. Passion, intellectual play, love, formal curiosity, actual social engagement, the very experience of theatre itself, seem very far away. No wonder "we no longer feel", as Glow says, "that theatre is as important as life itself".

I hope some of you took advantage of Currency's generous offer last month, and bought and read the book. Now I've had my say, I'm fascinated to hear yours.

We've all said the 2007 Melbourne Festival was a stunning success (some say life-changing). And now MIAF has released its figures. These figures have been the occasion for much festival bashing over the past three years, so they're worth a brief examination.

This year MIAF's total ticket sales were 76,897 - up around 16,000 from last year, and in the Leo Schofield ballpark of between 60,000 and 80,000 deemed desirable by chief festival Grinch Robin Usher. The average ticket price is an astoundingly low $29. And MIAF lists a long drumroll of shows that were sold out or at near capacity. The estimate for total attendance to all free and ticketed events, which the festival says is incomplete as figures are still coming in, is 475,000. Not bad for an event in a city of 3 million people that was said to interest nobody at all.

Total box-office return was $1,967,960. This will be the only figure some critics will look at, comparing it unfavourably with the Sydney Festival's $4 million, as if the success of an arts festival is only measured by economic profit. I guess it depends what you think an arts festival is for: after all, Sydney's program is avowedly more populist.

I don't want to miff my Sydney friends, but I can't say that the 2008 dance and theatre program has made me rush out to book my plane tickets up north. For one thing, we've seen quite a few of the Australian productions here already - five, by my count - a couple as MIAF premieres. And the program shows that if you want a $4million return, you don't headline Merce Cunningham or Peter Brook or Robert Wilson; you bring in Bjork and that other Wilson from the Beach Boys. Nothing against Bjork, we love her here, but the music program looks like the Big Day Out.

The Madwoman of Chaillot by Jean Giraudoux, adapted by Maurice J. Valency, directed by Simon Phillips. Designed by Stephen Curtis, lighting design by Toby Sewell, composer Ian McDonald. With Melinda Butel, Mitchell Butel, Melissa Chambers, Julie Forsyth, Francis Greenslade, Sam Hryckow, Sue Ingleton, Bert Labonte, Alex Menglet, Stephen Phillips, Grant Piro, Greg Stone, Magda Szubanski and Kerry Walker. Melbourne Theatre Company @ the Playhouse Theatre, Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne. November 14. Until December 15. Bookings: 1300 136 166.

We all have them. Those mornings when you wake and recall the events of the previous evening with the desperate hope that it was all a dream. You call your friends to check the facts: was it really that bad? And, very gently, they tell you that, yes, it was.

I had one of those mornings yesterday. On Wednesday night I went to see The Madwoman of Chaillot at the MTC. I entered the theatre with sprightly step, my eyes shining with hope; and three hours later I emerged a broken woman, with the kind of headache that follows a night of concentrated debauchery. My objection to this is that I suffered all the punishment with none of the fun.

It could have been a charming nonsense. The play concerns a cast of colourful Parisians – street singers, jugglers, friendly gendarmes, and so on – led by the madwoman of the title, Countess Aurelia (Magda Szubanski). They lounge picturesquely around their favourite café while a wicked Texan prospector (played by Julie Forsyth in a large black moustache and ten-gallon hat) announces that he has sniffed oil under them thar Parisian hills and, backed by the evil machinery of capitalism, is planning to turn the City of Light into an oilfield.

With the help of a great deal of absurdity, the plot is worsted, greed and corruption are banished from the world and good triumphs. The play is a defiant bauble thrown into the face of bleak reality – Jean Giraudoux wrote it in 1942, in the depths of the Nazi occupation of France. And director Simon Phillips has assembled a cast that includes some of the best comic actors in the country. So what went wrong?

The details swim back to haunt me. Stephen Curtis’s set was like a Yoplait commercial: no cliché was left unturned. Was Paris ever so embarrassingly portrayed, outside a souvenir shop? I am sure I dreamed of the Eiffel Tower: there are a lot of Eiffel Towers in the set, painted on screens and curtains, just in case we miss the fact that this play is set in Paris.

To make absolutely certain we aren’t lost, most of the cast affects a motley assortment of French accents and quaint Gallic gestures. Szubanski is mercifully accent-free but, unlike the others, wears a radio mic. (This complements the tish-boom sound design nicely). There are moments when the actors manage to transcend this overdressed, heavy-handed production, but they’re pushing against the tide.

A scene between Szubanski, Sue Ingleton and Julie Forsyth, in which they play three mad old women with an imaginary dog, suggests what might have been possible; some real comedy began to emerge from the mannerisms. Sewn into the dialogue is a witty meta-theatrical commentary on its own fiction, of which absolutely nothing is made in the production. Among other brighter moments, Alex Menglet has a turn as a sewerman, and Michael Butel as the Ragpicker delivers a frenetic speech in defence of capitalist nastiness. But any signs of life are swiftly muffled by a suffocating froth of fuss and frills.

Phillips fills the stage with colour and movement, but with little else. In fact, there is so much colour and movement it is sometimes hard to follow the play. The text itself is a US adaptation, with Wall Street capitalists replacing the original Nazi bad guys, and so is punctuated with rather puzzling American references and what are – I think – moments of purely New York humour. I guess it’s 1940s New York humour: Maurice Valency’s adaptation, which was later made into a 1969 film starring Katharine Hepburn, dates from then. The jokes don’t translate to 2007 Melbourne, and contribute to the general feeling of heaviness: but I still don’t think the play needed to feel quite as long as it did.

There are touches that recall the lightness with which Phillips can direct: at the opening of each act, for example, the characters in a scene are backlit behind the curtain, briefly seeming like a group of daguerreotypes. But the feeling and flair that characterised his marvellous 2005 production of Cyrano de Bergerac is little in evidence. I’m not sure that I’ve ever spent such an empty a night in the theatre.

A shorter version of this review is published in today's Australian.

Ms TN is in another world at present, at Stage 2 of the endless project of Completing The Novel. Stages 3 and 4 involve copy-editing and proofing. Stage 5 is when the book is held firmly in my hot little hand, around June next year, I think. Remind me next time I speak blithely of things novelish that the last time I had this bright idea, I sentenced myself to seven years' hard labour. (OK, I admit, it's really not that bad - I'm actually quite excited at the moment; I just feel obliged to follow the ancient authorial tradition of complaint.)

Fortunately, my fellow bloggers are filling in any airtime I leave free with some fascinating discussions. The Guardian theatre blog page is becoming a must read: it is being colonised by some of my favourite bloggers. George Hunka makes his debut today with a piece on playwrights whose work is more often performed outside their home country, including our own Daniel Keene; and Andrew Haydon continues a series of debates on the relationship between theatre and politics with a post on "a state of near civil war" he perceives in British theatre at present between "proper theatre" and what is, I suppose, improper theatre.

I can't resist adding here that in Europe, Australia has always been linked with impropriety: as the critic Louis Armand says, "Australia, it should be remembered, was first and foremost the destination of those who were considered to have insulted the law of property, it was dispossessed of those who failed to recognise the law of property, while [the environment] itself was consistently hostile to the idea of property - just as it has always been hostile to an aesthetics of the 'proper'." Of course, this is only partly true: colonial anxiety has also made some aspects of Australia proper to the point of vulgarity. But the strangely fraught question of what is "proper theatre" strikes me as being as of much interest in these here parts as it is in the northern hemisphere.

Your fearless correspondent reports for today's Guardian theatre blog on Nigel Jamieson's Honour Bound. It opens at London's Barbican theatre this week as part of Ozmosis, a festival of Australian performance that's included some other TN favourites - Back to Back Theatre's Small Metal Objects, which has attracted some favourable attention at Stratford tube station in the East End, and earlier this year Uncle Semolina (& Friends), with their show Gilgamesh.

Update: more reports from the Old Country: confederate rebel Andy Field takes off his bandana for a moment to see Small Metal Objects.

Last week, the Malthouse Theatre launched what looks like a very promising Season 1 for 2008. As well as a timely intention to address its carbon emissions with a 50c ticket levy that will be used for offsets, and an ambition - already thoroughly planned, if not yet funded - to redesign the theatre as exemplarily green. As director Michael Kantor says, if businesses wait for government leadership, nothing will get done.

But as for the season - my picks are Tartuffe (what is it with Tartuffe this year?) directed by Michael Kantor and Moving Target, a new play from Marius von Mayenburg commissioned by the Malthouse and the Sydney Opera House and directed by Benedict Andrews, the same team who brought us the brilliant Eldorado. Though Through the Looking Glass, with a libretto by the ubiquitous Andrew Upton and score by Alan Johns, and Venus and Adonis directed by Marion Potts, attract my eye as well. (Lots of co-productions here). As their offering to the Comedy Festival, they've picked up another Anne Browning/Peter Houghton collaboration - the same team who brought you The Pitch - from La Mama, with The China Syndrome. Oh, and don't miss Oscar Redding's miraculous film of Hamlet. I think that's the whole program.

More importantly - you know how narcissistic us bloggers are - the program prints a long list of bloggers under the heading "More Engagement". "Recently, we debated the virtues of a more chat-based space for our audiences," says the Malthouse. "In reality, there are already a host of independent blogs bursting with opinion and rattling the cages of certified criticism, and on which you can post your comments... Rather than compete, we thought we'd list some of the blogs we regularly visit." And so they have, in democratic alphabetic order. My god, a theatre more interested in discussion than in praise. Brilliaaant!

And as an addendum, TN notes that her campaign to reunite poetry and theatre is bearing instant fruit. This Wednesday, two shows open that feature two of her favourite poets, Sappho and Emily Dickinson. (This isn't quite what I meant by poetry in the theatre, but it's a good start). The irony is, of course, that given a rather intimidating deadline on a big project that has nothing to do with theatre, I might not be able to make either of them.

First, on Sunday afternoon, I'm co-ordinating the conversation on a Writers Panel to be held at fortyfivedownstairs. The putative title is Words in Space: Writing Narratives of Place and Locality, and the pin is Melburnalia, a production of five short plays about - you guessed it - Melbourne, curated by White Whale Theatre. And it's a most interesting line-up - the writers are Kate Holden, Lally Katz, Ross Mueller, Tee O’Neill and Alice Pung. (If you haven't read Pung's Unpolished Gem, a memoir about growing up in Footscray, well, you should - it was one of my books of last year). I'm sure it can't fail to be an interesting conversation, so do join us.

Details: $5 at the door, 4.15pm – 5.30pm on Sunday November 11, Fortyfivedownstairs, Flinders St, City. RSVPs requested on 9662 9966.

Second, last night the Malthouse launched what promises to be a most fab season 1 for 2008. Richard Watts mysteriously says it's embargoed - nobody told me, and it all looked very public, but you know me and embargoes. UPDATE: yup, it really was embargoed, so Ms TN has politely removed those (minimal) spoilers until Monday. Embargoes have to be shoved under my nose in nice big texta, I suspect.

Ms TN is stirring the possum on the Guardian theatre blog, with a post suggesting that poetry and theatre ought to be introduced to each other.

Little Alison has to get some serious work done in one of her other lives, or she will be pursued by angry editors bearing meathooks. So TN may be a bit quieter this week. Before I weld myself to the desk, let me introduce you - if you haven't struck it already - to playwright-about-town Sam Sejavka's extraordinary new blog, Sails of Oblivion. Like Mr Sejavka himself, it defies categorisation or any such mimsy limitations, but the blogosphere is the richer for his darkly chaotic presence. Also, he offers some handy hints on making a piñata that works.

And while you're at it, check out Carl Nilsson-Polias's blog, which I'm ashamed to say has not swum my way before, since he's been writing it since 2001. It's chockful of reviews, fascinating meditations and even interviews - for you many fans, the interview with MIAF favourite Jérôme Bel is a must-read.

Meanwhile, over at The Arcades Project and on the Guardian blogsite, Andy Fields teases out more on the politics of theatre (on which there is a most interesting convo below, with I hope more to come) and Mr Superfluities George Hunka buys into the form/politics question with some thoughts of his own about tragedy - "in exploration itself is political meaning". And while the conversation is boiling, Postcards from the Gods bod Andrew Haydon has another Guardian post asking stern questions about private sponsorhip. That should keep you all out of trouble. Or get you into it. Depending.

A little belatedly - Radio National's The Book Show broadcast my review of Ursula Le Guin's Voices last week. As I say of Ms Le Guin:

Language has always been central to the serious magic of Le Guin's work. In a short passage called 'A Few Words to a Young Writer', she says:

Socrates said, 'The misuse of language induces evil in the soul.' He wasn't talking about grammar. To misuse language is to use it the way politicians and advertisers do, for profit, without taking responsibility for what the words mean. Language used as a means to get power or make money goes wrong: it lies. Language used as an end in itself, to sing a poem or tell a story, goes right, goes towards the truth.

A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.

As a writer and reader, I find this statement inexpressibly moving in its directness and wise courage. And it also points to the deeply radical impulse that lies behind Le Guin's work.

Full transcript and audio here.