What are New Zealanders?

But by the end of the play, his belief in this myth has crumbled. He discovers that the nitty-gritty is a charade too, and the increasing chaos and violence in the last ten minutes of the play bring about the final disintegration of the myth, culminating in the smashing of a TV set showing a rugby game, and Foreskin launching into his climactic lament for the inadequacy of both the rugby and intellectual standpoints. Thus there is no resolution, and Foreskin's final question of "Whaddarya?" is to the audience - What are New Zealanders? Without the egalitarian myth to hide behind how can we have a national identity?

This ending is very theatrically powerful and is made all the more provocative by McGee's careful arguing of ideas throughout the play. He uses characters representing different social positions, (most obviously, Moira as the intellectual, Clean as the rugby man, and Foreskin caught between the two), and in the second act plays off these representatives against eachother. This is done unobtrusively by setting the conversations on a balcony outside an off-stage party. This enables him to group various individuals together for confrontation.

However, the characters are not merely types. Like Arthur Miller in Death of Salesman, McGee exposes characters enough to make us hate them, and then justifies them because they are human beings. Miller has Linda say of her husband: "I don't think he's a great man... He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being... Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person".

In the same way, it would be easy to despise the chauvinistic, animalistic, Clean, but McGee shows that he has been a victim, and Foreskin defends him against Moira in saying: "If you haven't had to wonder where your next buck is coming from, then you've missed out on the major preoccupation of the waking hours of the Western world."