Harold Holt: The Man, The Myth, The Pool review | James Ward | Melbourne Fringe Festival | Bard's Apothecary

I may be incorrect, but I do believe Australia is the only country in the world to have lost a Prime Minister. On 17 December 1967, Harold Holt went for a swim and never returned. Poof. Gone. Disappeared! In Harold Holt: The Man, The Myth, The Pool, James Ward tells us about this. But to simply tell us about it would be lazy. What Ward does instead is take a deep dive into the cultural and political times surrounding Holt’s drowning, and how Holt’s own choices, actions and lifestyle contributed to the circumstances of his death.

Ward presents as many visual cues as he can through an exceptionally well put-together presentation. Remembering this was a time when capturing live footage of someone wasn’t as easy as having a phone in your hand, Ward has managed to assemble newspaper articles, book extracts, graphs, charts and archival interviews with Holt's wife, all helping to explore the bigger picture of this period in history.

It’s edutainment at its finest. Sure, I knew that Holt went missing and that we have ironically named a swimming pool after him, but when Ward starts talking about his political dealings, his relationships with women (including his stepmother) and how the tide was beginning to turn on him during the Vietnam War, you find yourself leaning in more and more. The piece becomes less about the mystery of Holt’s fate and more about understanding the man who vanished.

Ward has a good grasp of the material, speaking at a fast pace that adds urgency to the story and allows him to emphasise certain points and details. His full breaths create useful pauses for tension, breaking up the rapid delivery and allowing some of the information to sink in.

However, in its final stretch, the show begins to get bogged down by numbers Ward throws out as he explores drowning statistics in Australia and what sits behind these facts. He also seems to lose focus on what he wants us to walk away with, raising ideas around immigrant drownings in Australia and how the media reports on these incidents as contributing to high drowning rates, before moving into gender roles and the differing rates of boys and girls drowning.

There are interesting ideas here, but they begin to feel disconnected from the story we have spent the previous 45 minutes following. Rather than bringing the threads together, the last section introduces further information without quite landing on what we're meant to take away from it.

A tightening of the conclusion would make Harold Holt: The Man, The Myth, The Pool a more cohesive production. There is plenty to learn here, and Ward makes what could have been a familiar historical anecdote surprisingly engaging by looking beyond the disappearance itself and into the man, the politics and the Australia surrounding it.

SHOW DETAILS

Venue: Bard's Apothecary, 24 Crossley Street, Melbourne 
Season: until 10 October | Tues - Sat 5:30pm 
Duration: 60 minutes
Tickets: $30 - $34 Full | $24.50 - $28 Conc | $22.50 Hump Day Wednesday
Bookings: Melbourne Fringe Festival

Image credit: James Ward