Romily is driven by external gratification, she wants to be seen as glamorous and successful. She’s tasted greatness and she wants it back at any cost! Once a top on-air presenter she faded with age from the spotlight and was replaced by someone younger, sharper, prettier. This bitterness is the real engine of her anger – not the ‘workplace incident’ nor the blasted Leaf Blowers! She has invested all of her hopes and dreams into her novel and will do anything to make it a $ucce$$! Of course what she really NEEDS to do is let the anger go (funny Monsters), accept herself for who she is and live her best life with what she’s got - a loving daughter, grandchild and boyfriend.
Eva is driven by internal fulfilment. She’s spent a lifetime playing second fiddle to her mum’s first love - her career, and has seen what a futile trap it can be. Now that she’s moved home for support during her pregnancy she yearns for her mother to put her and baby Amelia first. Success for Eva is freedom in anonymity to raise her child on her own terms and enjoy a full life. Eva is building a ‘cherry-picker rental’ business so that she can make money increasingly passively. Eva fears that Rom will never change - that she won’t be any more engaged as a ‘Nana’ than she was as a mum. Her superpower is that she has irrefutable proof - better evidence than Detective Dave - that her mother is definitely tied up in the LB deaths somehow. Will she act on it?
Danny’s been battling ‘the system’ (colonisation) all his life and has learnt, the hard way, how to redefine success on his own terms. A bit like Ben Kenobi is to Luke Skywalker, Danny is Romily’s spiritual guide and mentor providing hope and a positive pathway forward. But, more like Anakin perhaps, Romily is overwhelmed by her ambitious ego, gives in to her worst instincts and choses to become Darth Vader. The subtext here is capitalism vs socialism or the ‘growth culture’ of modern western civilisation (predatory to mother earth) vs the sustainable culture of indigenous peoples (at one / in partnership with nature). At the end of this story, her last minute flip to the dark side is unbeknownst to Danny – only the audience knows.
The therapist represents Romily’s conscience, however In forcing her to face her demons - Dr Ruth inadvertently amplifies them. It’s Dr Ruth’s character that exposes the true nature of Romily’s anger - bruised ego and professional envy. Which we can empathise with but, as we intuitively all know, ultimately does not serve anybody’s interests in the long run? Tolerance, communication and acceptance are the answers. We have to learn to let go of our demons and laugh at the ‘funny monsters’. Through Dr Ruth the audience are presented with the anatomy of Romily’s anger; first denial, then confession and acceptance – the real issues exposed, then distraction (lust for Danny) and finally embrace – taking charge of her situation. Ouch!
Dave, the lone ‘gone rogue’ Policeman (trope) chasing Romily represents the ‘inconvenient truth’ of this story; Romily IS causing the accidents but no-one really cares because the evidence is mostly circumstantial and perhaps cos the victims are low profile everyday working people? Society wants quick solutions and if not – just wants to move on. But Dave can’t move on and is literally driven further and further into a demented frenzy as he becomes increasingly convinced, rightly so, of Rom’s guilt despite the apparent flimsiness of his actual tangible evidence. This character is inspired by the Chief of Police in the Pink Panther films - driven CRAZY by Peter Seller's Inspector Clouseau. The 'maddening' injustice that the TRUTH means nothing if you can’t prove it – re Epstein etc.
The Publisher is a lieutenant of the ‘patriarchy’ undermining Romily’s vision and creativity every step of the way. He’s really only interested in her more salacious ideas that might better $ell, further recommending she add celebrity gossip from her journalism days – especially her infamous spat with younger reporter ‘Rachael’. In this way he is directly pouring fuel on the fire of her anger issues and her ears are smoking for sure. But, driven by ambition – the desire to get her book published, Romily does her best to work with him – this is what she must endure to succeed, a plight that provides plenty of opportunity to smash some comedic brutality out of gender politics.
In this story we’re having some fun satirising society and reversing traditional roles. The protagonist, although hopefully a ‘likeable rogue’ is actually the ‘bad guy’ (representing our worst instincts), and the antagonist is really the ‘good guy’ in that he is the only one focused on truth and the greater societal good. Which cynically, as we know from real life, is mostly ignored in favour of the capitalist agendas of the wealthy. Nor is our protagonist a traditional ‘change character’ - she is presented with the spiritual guidance and opportunity to change but choses to embrace her dark side in the name of ego and ambition - again arguably a more realistic portrayal of the types of ‘powerful’ people we see dominating in our contemporary $ociety.
Yeah it's WARNING vibes - ambition ultimately manifests one way or another as violence? WAR is Greed - is EGO.
As a society we must embrace ‘soft power’ or it is likely we will perish because of the in$anely $elfish actions of the few. Those who represent the ‘worst humans on the planet’ and have somehow managed to gain the most power are currently dominating human culture on a course of almost certain destruction? WTF? How did we get here?
The fact that the protagonist perpetrator is a woman is deliberate too. I believe the idea that women will save humanity is a nice fantasy, but ultimately a fallacy - as Margaret Thatcher, Pam Bondi, Kirsty Noem and many many others (including Judith Collins) make clear. In my own experience - my very ‘best boss’ was a woman - but then the very very ‘worst boss’ I ever had by a long way - was also a woman. I don’t think gender is the root of the problem, the problem is that a system based on unbridled capitalism will self-destruct because the endless growth it demands will first devolve into authoritarinism and then ultimately the anniliation of everything? Bugger!
