Top Girls - GRADS Theatre Company (6 July 2024)

A good story, well told. It's what I hope for every time I go to a theatre production. Make me laugh, make me cry, make me think, make me feel. Most times a tale washes over you as you sit there and simply enjoy the storytelling. Sometimes you have to work for it. Top Girls by Caryl Churchill falls into the latter camp. The rewards for your patience, your curiosity, your attention are immense. This is a famous play with an iconic opening scene. It's complex, endlessly fascinating, boldly structured, and thematically dense. There's a moment where it all clicked into place for me which was sublime. But we'll get to that later. For now I want to track my reactions as the play unfurls and slowly reveals its secrets...

We begin with Marlene (Solonje Burns) literally 'running up that hill' as she climbs and reclimbs a set of stairs, giddy at the news of her promotion at an employment agency. She celebrates at a restaurant that is beautifully presented with Chinese lanterns overhead, patterned flats, a curved booth, and table. Her friends arrive but they're no ordinary people - they have been conjured from history and fiction in a striking and eclectic mix of women. Here's where the work for the audience begins on multiple fronts - I was familiar with Pope Joan (thanks, Rest Is History podcast) but not overly with Isabella Bird, Lady Nijo, Dull Gret, and Griselda. We glean information as they reveal who they are and interact but this is complicated by extensive use of overlapping dialogue. Costuming helps us place these women in time but it's not until fairly late in the scene when we are specifically told they are centuries apart. Common strands begin to emerge in their conversations - the significance of childbirth, ownership, sacrifice, and navigating the whims of men in their respective times. 

Photo by Grant Malcolm

It's a boisterous scene as Marlene becomes increasingly drunk and it's all pitched as a girls night out with Director Virginia Moore Price clearly encouraging the cast to play. I loved the physicality as Burns clambers over the booth, stands on the table, and is all grand gestures as are her guests. Suzannah Churchman is bold as Isabella Bird; Sarah Plummer crawls over the stage in a startling papal birthing moment; while Jenny Howard's Dull Gret bursts into life at the end of the scene. Lady Nijo (Kelly Cleary) is more elegant and beholden to her 9th century male overlords and Emilia Lawonski's Griselda, the latecomer to the party, exhibits a brittleness that will become important later. The set is a mess by the end of it as bowls and other props fly everywhere, most amusingly as the cast stomp along to Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights and Howard unintentionally sends a bowl scooting into the wings with the force and accuracy of Cortnee Vine's penalty kick that propelled the Matildas into the World Cup semi-finals.

As I puzzle over what it all means it hits me that Marlene has summoned these women from her imagination which means she's actually celebrating alone. This is a significant realisation for later. 

We are then thrust into a scene set in a backyard where a girl, Angie (Lawonski), hides from her mother, Joyce, with a friend. Unfortunately this is under a set of stairs temporarily located at the foot of the stage so my view was obstructed from the 8th row. It takes a dark turn as Angie confronts Churchman's Joyce with no small amount of tension as the threat of violence hangs in the air. What a way to go into intermission!

Sadly, we lost a fair view audience members after the break. All I can say is, yes, the opening half may have seemed obtuse and challenging but you missed out on a superlative second half.

Which opens with a set design that will give me nightmares for weeks! Having worked in offices for the better part of 30 years the use of eight, overhead fluorescent lights was genius. The only thing that could have traumatised me more was if one of them were flickering (there's always one!). This sequence in the Top Girls Employment Agency plays out as a sly satire about the modern workplace circa 1982 from a woman's perspective. Significant aspects include - the employees exhibiting male traits and perpetuating male stereotypes as a way to get ahead; Marlene all cock-a-hoop as she is about to become the top girl; and a visit from her niece, Angie, who clearly idolises her. There's also a cleverly written and delivered inversion where Win (Georgina Teakle) after being bored by the details of a candidate's resume ends up blurting out her life story to another candidate. Another fascinating moment is when the wife of the man Marlene will replace, Mrs Kidd (Howard), basically asks Marlene to step aside because her husband won't be able to cope, being a man and all! 

Then we get to the true showstopper - the final scene. It's set one year earlier where Marlene has travelled to visit her sister Joyce at the behest of her niece Angie. Set in Joyce's kitchen as the two sisters sit across from each other under an old style light fixture. Marlene has brought presents which excites Angie no end including a significant call back to an earlier scene. Then the sisters get down to business. They bicker back and forth and it's clear they have made vastly different choices which have led to this moment. A secret, that until this point has been well concealed, is revealed. 

That's when one of those rare theatrical treats you crave kicks in. It was like I had been staring at a slightly blurred photograph when suddenly it snaps into focus. Everything made sense after that revelation. This scene is a microcosm of the dreamlike opening. Of course the dialogue was overlapping - sisters having this sort of fraught conversation don't politely wait for each other to finish their lines. Of course Marlene was getting increasingly drunk. And of course the stories those historical and fictional women were telling related directly to this moment in devastating fashion. It is brilliantly written and brilliantly performed by Burns and Churchman. Where Virginia Moore Price had let the cast run riot in the opening here she embraces stillness especially as we close on Burns as the lights dim; Marlene broken down and vulnerable in direct counterpoint to her sly bitchiness and confidence in the preceding scene. It's a sublime ending.

Solonje Burns is superb throughout. Suzannah Churchman matches her in that exquisite final scene. Emilia Lawonski makes an impressive community theatre debut as Angie in a very physical performance as the awkward teen. The cast as a whole are terrific - Jenny Howard, Sarah Plummer, Vicky Williams, Georgina Teakle, Giordana Marra, Kelly Cleary, and Amanda Langton. 

As is the creative team Virginia Moore Price has put together including Merri Ford's costume design, choreographer Amanda Watson, and props & stage art work by Kresna, while Price also did set, lighting and sound design. 

You hope going in to get a good story, well told. Sometimes you get a great story, exceptionally well told. 

Top Girls is on at the Stirling Theatre until July 20 and is a must see. 

Dramafest - Session 1 (22 September 2014)

The weeklong Dramafest opened at Playlovers in Floreat on Monday night with a welcoming introduction by an erudite man with a beard who was eventually revealed to be Paul Treasure, President of the Independent Theatre Association. The adjudicator for the one act drama festival is none other than reigning Performing Arts WA (PAWA) Best Actor, Adam T Perkins who is also a director and producer of theatre. Festival Director Emma Davis was in attendance to greet the small but enthusiastic audience.

There were three one act productions on the night with the performer for the 10 minute spotlight unfortunately unable to participate due to illness. At the end of the evening Perkins gave his feedback which was instructive as he was coming at it very much from an acting/directing perspective. For me, however, the first session highlighted how important good writing is, without which you’re behind the proverbial from the get go.

The night began with what proved to be quite an inspired choice – a wildcard entry from the barely concluded Youthfest. Simply titled The Audition from SPY (which I assume is Stirling Players Youth) this was a cleverly written script that was enthusiastically and well performed. There were numerous theatre in-jokes and there is a certain joy to watching a young teenage actor deadpan a Beckett or Sam Shepard reference. The names of the performers weren’t listed but they played: the impatient and harried stage manager conducting the auditions; the nervous female auditionee; the ebullient actress well under the imaginary show’s minimum age of 15; an enthusiastic mime; and the pompous actor who thought nothing of improving Medea by adding a little Bottom from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Finally, there was the underappreciated assistant who had a vent about her lot in theatre life. It was a clever script that was lapped up by both the young actors and the audience.

The next production was a locally written piece called Flight of Fancy by Garrick Theatre. The premise of which was that a husband and wife both end up booking competing holidays because he thinks she is unhappy and she thinks he’s having an affair (after overhearing him talking to the female travel consultant on the phone). A promising enough set-up but this needed to be fast-paced and witty. Unfortunately the writing just wasn’t there and it ended up being more awkward and stilted as the actors battled valiantly but didn’t have the ammunition that a cracking script could have given this. Flight of Fancy was written and directed by Luke Heath and starred Luke Miller, Shelly Miller, Claudia Lloyd and Charles Pratt.

By comparison, the final piece, At Home With The Herringbones by Stirling Theatre did have a strong script and an excellent cast that gave it real justice. It’s no secret that I’m a fan of wordplay so being playful with language is right in my wheelhouse – dangling modifiers, incorrect word usage, ending sentences with prepositions, all that sort of wonderful Grammar Nazi stuff that can make people’s head explode. What made this even more satisfying is that the pompous Lord Herringbone’s pedantic correction of language and grammar was an important character trait not merely the writer showing off. The story slowly revealed itself to be somewhat of a mystery with a cheeky bent and a few late twists along the way. There were some nice sight gags as well. Economically staged and slickly performed this was well received by the audience. Written and Directed by Bob Charteris, the play starred Fran Gordon, Paul Anderson, Peter Flanigan, Alexandra D’Ulisse, and Georgi Ivers.

Dramafest continues 7.30pm Wednesday 24 September at Hackett Hall in Floreat.

Broken Glass - GRADS (5 June 2014)

1938 and the infamous Kristallnacht takes the harassment of Jews in Nazi Germany to new levels as a precursor of the horror to come. In Brooklyn, a Jewish woman - Sylvia Gellburg (Maree Grayden) - obsessed by the newspaper reports of the persecution suddenly finds herself unable to walk. Baffled by this, her husband Phillip (Geoff Miethe) engages the services of Doctor Hyman (Neil Cartmell) who becomes personally invested in finding the cause.

The great Arthur Miller, Nazis, American Jews and what was billed as a mystery has me intrigued. What I quickly come to realise is that this play is essentially two things: a kitchen sink, husband-wife melodrama; and an exploration of what it means to be Jewish. I have no personal context for the latter which infuses the play especially in the second act and therefore I felt emotionally distant from its characters and message. The ‘mystery’ of the marital breakdown is related to this over-arching theme and allusions to events in Germany are none too subtle thematic buttresses.

However, I was interested in how the play was constructed, predominantly as a series of two-handers with only two, maybe three moments I recall with more than two people in a scene - Husband and Doctor, Doctor and Wife, Husband and Wife, Doctor’s Wife and Husband, Wife and Sister and so on. This means it’s quite a static play and very dialogue heavy.

The set is beautifully appointed – stage left is the doctor’s office; centre stage is the Gellburg’s bedroom; stage right is the office of Stanton Case (Phillip Mackenzie) who Phillip works for. Cellist Sophie Parkinson-Stewart is situated back of stage behind a transparent screen and adds texture and tone with music composed by Grant Olding.

Cartmell is good as Doctor Hyman but in many ways his character is essentially a device – his occupation allows him to constantly ask questions of both husband and wife to probe and reveal the true state of the Gellburg marriage. In this respect many of the questions are oddly personal. There is an attraction manufactured between his character and Sylvia that allows him to (almost) get away with this. Grayden gives a strong performance as the neglected wife though the latter stages do verge into heavy melodrama as confessions are made and declarations intoned.

Georgia Jones as Mrs. Hyman adds much needed sassiness and Sally Barendse has a couple of lovely moments as Sylvia’s sister, Harriet. These two characters add life to what otherwise is pretty earnest material. Mackenzie has three scenes as the wealthy businessman who gets cheated out of a property deal due to Phillip’s misunderstanding of events. Miethe, however, did not have the best of nights as the main character, struggling with his dialogue throughout. Hopefully this is only opening night nerves as it affected key scenes, his characterisation, and created a few awkward moments.

I found the play difficult to embrace as it has a very specific message in mind which I can intellectually understand but have no emotional connection to. It is, however, an Arthur Miller play so there are some nicely written exchanges and the cello music does add another layer.

Directed by Barry Park, Broken Glass is on at the Stirling Theatre in Innaloo until 14 June.