We seldom see Thomas Bernhard’s play performed on the Australian stage. In 35 years of fairly hardcore theatre going, this is only the third play by one of the most important writers in the 20th-century Germanosphere I’ve seen. The second was an STC production of The Histrionic, back in 2012. The first, Force of Habit, directed by Jean-Pierre Mignon for Anthill Theatre in Melbourne in 1993, featured Julie Forsyth, who is (fun fact) also in this production.

We shouldn’t be surprised. Like his German language contemporaries Peter Handke and Botho Strauss, Bernhard (who died in 1989) is, in box office parlance, a pretty hard sell. Among the hardest, in fact.

That said, The President is among the most accessible of his dozen or so major plays and this Sydney Theatre Company and Gate Theatre (Dublin) co-production does have a couple of major audience drawcards in Hugo Weaving and Ireland’s Olwen Fouéré.

Julie Forsyth and Olwyn Fouéré (seated) in The President. Photo © Daniel Boud

Written in 1975 (this Gitta Honegger translation dates back to 1982), The President opens in a dressing room of the Presidential Palace, where the nameless First Lady (Fouéré) is haranguing her maid over her choice of black dresses, bewailing the state of the nation and grieving the recent loss of her beloved dog.

The President (Weaving) is in an unseen room adjacent, taking a noisy bath and cracking jokes with his attendant. Like the President himself, the country he rules is not named.

As the First Lady talks into her dressing room mirror, we learn that The President’s grip on power may be slipping. Just days ago, he came within a hair’s-breadth of an anarchist’s bullet during a visit to the capital’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Less fortunate were the President’s head of security, who died instantly, and the first Lady’s elderly dog, which succumbed to a heart attack in the commotion.

The majority of the first act (which take us to interval) is devoted to the self-absorbed First Lady’s fragmented monologue: her wardrobe issues; her assassination trauma (“He could have been shot through the head / a shot through the president’s head / from an ambush / fatal”); her role in an upcoming production for children. In between, she monsters her hapless maid Mrs Frolick (Julie Forsyth).

Hugo Weaving and Kate Gilmore in The President. Photo © Daniel Boud

After interval, the play takes us to Estoril, Portugal, where The President is enjoying some downtime with his mistress, an actress (Kate Gilmore) who likes to gamble with The President’s money. He also finds time for some boozy diplomatic schmoozing with Portuguese generalissimos and ministers.

Fouéré (who impressed mightily several years ago when she made her Sydney debut in the Finnegan’s Wake adaptation Riverrun, is no less remarkable this time around. Physically, vocally, she is a virtuoso performer.

Weaving’s President is a massive, growling figure, a man of seemingly limitless appetite (especially for champagne). Weaving’s attack is impressively varied. It is no mean feat to keep Bernhard’s reiterative text alive and vivid for an audience – and no mean feat to keep the playwright’s long, unpunctuated skeins of monologue in one’s head, either.

An interesting aside: Bernhard’s disdain for actors was semi-legendary. Interviewed in 1985, he said, “I can’t stand actors … They utterly ally themselves with stupidity and feeble-mindedness. Actors destroy and annihilate imagination, they don’t bring it to life … they are the true gravediggers of literature.” It goes some way to explain why he makes it so hard going for them.

Forsyth is delightful as Mrs Frolick, gently clowning in the gaps allowed by the First Lady. Most of the other roles (lackeys, generals) are near-silent, too, but they’re impeccably played by a notably stellar cast of minor role performers in Alan Dukes, Tony Cogin, Danny Adcock and Helmut Bakaitis.

The President. Photo © Daniel Boud

Directed by Irishman Tom Creed, the play is unavoidably static at times, but it’s alive with little flecks of comic business, while a sharp sense of pace keeps the piece on its toes and able to sustain audience engagement. Those who do drop off will find themselves regularly blasted into consciousness by the fractured trumpet fanfares and thunderous, Taiko-like drums of Stefan Gregory’s impressive score.

Bernhard’s acrid humour provoked a steady trickle of chuckles across two hours of state time on this occasion. But did the audience have a good time? Hard to say. The President denies them the release inherent in a round of applause. (It’s worth noting that Bernhard’s disdain for his bourgeoise audience was at least equal to that of actors: “Nothing repels me more than observing people in the act of admiration, people infected with some admiration,” he once wrote).

Those who attempted to applaud on opening night were quickly hushed by an unctuous attendant. Spoiler etiquette forbids any mention of what happens next but it’s a perfect ending.

The President plays at the Roslyn Packer Theatre, Walsh Bay, Sydney, until 19 May.