Sandra Bates’s assured production of leading New Zealand playwright Roger Hall’s 2008 play FOUR FLAT WHITES IN ITALY makes for an enjoyable, comfortable, bourgeois night at the theatre.
FOUR FLAT WHITES IN ITALY turns on what happens when two neighbouring couples, Ardrian (Michael Ross) and Alison(Sharon Flanagan), and Harry (Henri Szeps) and Judy (Mary Regan)who don’t know each other particularly well, travel on holiday to Italy together. As Adrian, who plays something of a narrator role, says, the plan is ‘to have the adventure before the dementia’!
Marissa Dale-Johnson’s outstanding set, with a full ‘canvas’ length backdrop of a prime Italian setting, quickly flys over to one of the heartlands of Europe.
Through the play there are plenty of classic, easily relatable travel situations. Teething issues between the couples, unease over the splitting of a bill at a hotel restaurant, being ripped off and mistreated by locals…Hall writes the scenes with a light, comic, ironic touch. In one memorably quirky scene, the two couples are in a gondolier being a serenaded by a local singing a classic opera aria, when his mobile phone goes off and he answers it, swiftly changing to his every day character!
My main engagement with Hall’s play was in the well drawn and recognisable characters that he put on stage. Everyone knows an Alison, wonderfully played by Sharon Flanagan. A conservative, middle-aged, middle-class woman….very bossy, an organiser, mother-like figure. Always having to be busy…forever doing washing and cleaning. She has a penchant for ‘bagging’ and being critical of her husband.
The ever reliable Michael Ross plays her husband, Adrian. Adrian is a bit of a timid, unconfident, competitive man carrying around an inferiority complex. The marriage between Alison and Adrian had been rocked by tragedy, ‘freezing’ Alison and Adrian in time.
Henri Szeps plays Harry, a confident, generous, assured man (Adrian is jealous of the cool way that Harry drapes his jumper over his shoulder). I had a bit of an issue with the way I felt that Szeps screeched his lines too much. Mary Regan plays his wife, Judy, a bright, flirtatious, sensual woman. Together they make a sensual couple, boosting of their ‘hot’ marriage, sharply contrasting with their neighbour’s marriage.
Adriano Cappelletta and Sara Bovolenta reveled in playing a variety of colourful local characters that the intrepid travelers encountered.
Sandra Bates’s production of Roger Hall’s FOUR FLAT WHITES IN ITALY opened at the Ensemble theatre, Kirribilli on Friday 16th September and plays until Sunday 16th October, 2011. FOUR FLAT WHITES IN ITALY then has a short tour to Canberra, playing the Street theatre, Canberra between Tuesday 25th and Saturday 29th October, 2011.
(C)David Kary
9th October, 2011
Tags: FOUR FLAT WHITES IN ITALY, Roger Hall, New Zealand playwright, Ensemble theatre, Street theatre Canberra,Sandra Bates, Michael Ross, Sharon Flanagan, Henri Szeps, Mary Regan, Marissa Dale Johnson, Adriano Cappelleta, Sara Bovolenta, Steve Lunam