Produced for the first time at Griffin Theatre Company in 1986, Away is the best known of Michael Gow's plays, both within Australia and around the world. Gow had just turned 30 before the play was written, and in writing it, Gow has said that he sought to both take stock of his personal growth as well as conjecture where his formative moments in life would lead him in the future. Appropriately, the play seeks to highlight the tension between youth and adulthood, while also overlaying this tension with the aftermath of struggles that beset Australia throughout the 20th century like the Vietnam War. On a more granular level, the play showcases different Australians' opinions of and reactions to class difference, as well as the emotional burden related to the death and illness of children. As such, the play aptly captures many aspects of Australian life in the late 1960s and calls attention to the performativity inherent in each of these aspects. A fascination with Shakespeare and theater that recurs throughout the text also reinforces the play's focus on affectation, pretense, and presentation.
In terms of plot, the play follows three Australian families as they travel for the Christmas holiday. The opening scene, set just after a school performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream, introduces readers to these families and conveys key information about how they differ. First, we are introduced to Tom, a talented actor who played Puck in the play, and Meg, a young lady in whom Tom is interested. Next, we are introduced to their parents, who walk in just after Tom gifts Meg a brooch. Tom's parents are Harry and Vic, working-class British immigrants to Australia, and they mention that they plan to drive around the country during the upcoming holiday. Meg's parents, on the other hand, are Gwen and Jim, two wealthier Australians who plan on seriously caravanning during the holiday and who have lost sight of life's joys while attempting to maintain their prosperity. Finally, the headmaster of the school, Roy, is introduced with his wife Coral, whose emotional state and relationship with her husband have deteriorated rapidly since the death of their son in the Vietnam War. Roy and Coral plan on spending time in an expensive Gold Coast hotel over the holiday. As the play advances, the class prejudice of Meg's parents towards Tom's parents, the emptiness of Jim and Gwen's materialism, and the failure of capitalism and material comforts to sustain Coral and Roy's relationship are all made manifest as their respective vacations fall apart and intersect. We also learn that Tom is terminally ill and that Gwen and Jim act in the way they do because of their worries during the post-economic depression. The drama ends with a play-within-a-play, as Tom and Coral stage a performance together on the beach that the other characters watch as part of a New Year's concert. After this performance, some of the couples are able to reconcile and move past their central conflicts. In the final scene, readers are sent back to the schoolyard in the following year, where King Lear is being put on and—depending on the version—either Tom or another child (implying Tom's death) reads some lines.
At the time of its debut, the play received a great deal of critical acclaim, earning Gow a NSW Premier’s Literary Award (1986), a Green Room Award (1986), and an Australian Writers’ Guild Major Award (1987). It is widely taught in Australian high schools, especially in New South Wales, and it is beloved by many for its simultaneous levity and poignancy. In exploring the themes of loss and death, probing some of the deepest fears we struggle with in youth and middle age, and touching on the ways we cope with these fears, the play reaches something universal and draws readers in for the accuracy with which it renders daily life. It is this universal quality that the Sydney Morning Herald's Jason Blake touched on while reviewing a recent production of the play, calling it "remarkably timeless and plastic." Others, like New Zealand critic Gail Pittaway, have lauded the play's ingenious ability to balance the fantasies of Shakespeare and the stage with the harsh realities of Tom's illness, Coral's bereavement, and Gwen's selfish materialism. Still, on the other side of things, others like Joseph Couch that have directed the play in recent years have mentioned that they struggle with the play's cultural import, finding it difficult to reinterpret the play and cast it in a new light apart from the mold set for it by the high school canon.
