With his play SUNDAY, Australian playwright Anthony Weigh has written a very evocative play inspired by the Heidi Circle, a free spirited artist community. Weigh in his program note makes it clear that his play is not biographical, “There are many wonderful biographies about the Heidi Circle and the artists they complicatedly, simultaneously. This play is gaps and shadows. The things that biographers could not tell us. The things we could never know.”
First, some background, as many may not know about the Heide Circle, often known as the Heide School, was an influential group of modernist artists who gathered at Heide, a property in the Melbourne suburb of Bulleen, near Heidelberg, during the mid-20th century.
This informal artist colony was founded by art patrons John and Sunday Reed, who transformed their home into a creative haven for avant-garde artists, writers, and thinkers. Heide became a significant hub for Australia’s modern art movement, particularly from the 1930s to the 1950s, attracting figures who shaped Australian modernism.
The Reeds offered more than just physical space to work; they provided a nurturing environment where artists could live, share ideas, and collaborate freely. Some of the most notable artists associated with the Heide Circle include Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, Joy Hester, Arthur Boyd, and Charles Blackman. Nolan, for example, painted his famous Ned Kelly series at Heide.
In to this larger than life, idyllic setting Weigh places only five characters. They are John and Sunday Reed, the boy who they ‘adopt’ Sweeney, and two of Australia’s most celebrated artists, Joy Hester and Sidney Nolan, with both their careers blossoming as a result of their residencies there.
Most all Weigh is a study, a portrait of the fiercely independent title character. Whereas servitude in marriage was what many women longed for, Sunday found this notion dull and insipid. Her marriage with John was an open marriage and one based on a deeper friendship and loyalty. People’ could have affairs who they wanted to, with their main drive being to get the artists under their care to reach their maximum impact.
Things become complicated when Sunday and the divinely talented Sidney Nolan begin a tempestuous affair. Will the love triangle undermine the utopian idea of the Heidi Circle?!
It has to be now said that the original spur for Weigh to write SUNDAY came from director Sarah Goodes who knew that the Melbourne Theatre Company wanted to commission a play about the mystique surrounding the Heidi Circle and believed that he was best playwright to take it on. Goodes judgement proved fortuitous. The writing is excellent, and like all the best dramas, everything comes to a head in the final scenes.
Goodes’ stagecraft, along with her design team; set designer Anna Cordingley, costume designer Harriet Oxley, lighting designer Paul Jackson, composer and sound designer Jethro Woodward, and voice and dialect coach Geraldine Cook, evokes a rich theatrical world.
Goodes wins fine, focused performances from the cast; Jude Hyland as Sweeney, the boy that John and Sunday adopt, Ratizdo Mambo plays the joyful, wonderful artist, Joy Hester who lends Sunda a great deal of support when her mental health suffers, James O’Donnell plays the rough diamond Sidney Nolan, and Matt Day is the even tempered, kind hearted John Reed who is Sunday’s rock and shelter.
There is something infinitely compelling about watching a totally driven character, and when you get to see a performance as blazing as Nikki Shiels is, then this Is when drama soars.
A Sydney Theatre Company presentation of a Melbourne Theatre Company production, Anthony Weigh’s SUNDAY is playing the Drama Theatre at the Sydney Opera House until the 14th December 2024.
