Man Stripped Bare

These days, and increasingly so, the playwright is indignant. Unlike a youth's reckless rage or an old man's sour huff, Michael Gurr's fury radiates white heat. "I've never been angrier," he says. "Our current national government has presided over a time of almost unbelievable moral corruption." Gurr is speaking about toughening up the idea of compassion, his words punching through the chill wind of a bloody-minded Melbourne spring. His conviction is kinetic: he's a man with a steady gaze and fresh legs, impatient to change the temper of the times. What's to be done? We're out in Gurr's Footscray neighborhood, in...