Hate is the story of the Gleasons - a rich, ruling-class white Australian family: a patriarch with monolithic ambition, his dutiful and iron-willed wife and their three children, variously sycophantic, cynical and despairing. Sewell uses a huge canvas in this passionate family epic, where the inner life of late twentieth century Australia is mercilessly exposed by the microcosm of the Gleason family. The machinations, both personal and political are fierce, violent and cruel. This is not sweet and innocent Australia, this is Australia flexing its muscles in the international market; this is greedy, corporate Australia. This is also vintage Sewell: a cry for the dispossessed, the forgotten and the despised.
Hate was commissioned for the Australian Bicentennial celebrations in 1988.
"...a play of considerable power and substance." — The Age
"Sewell gives a human face to the vast suffering, hatred, torture and killings that occur every day at a presumed safe distance." — Sydney Morning Herald
