Away is a play written by Australian playwright Michael Gow. First performed by the Griffin Theatre Company in 1986, it tells the story of three internally conflicted families holidaying on the coast for Christmas, 1968.
Away has become one of the most widely produced Australian plays of all time and is part of the Higher School Certificate syllabi or general High School Curriculum in many states, including Western Australia, New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria.
With the play's conscious nods to Shakespeare (it opens with the school's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream and ends with King Lear). Gow emphasises the performativity of individual human responses to death, racism, class and relationships. Gow sees the play as largely autobiographical.
