In his program notes to his production of Cathy Downes’s play THE CASE OF KATHERINE MANFIELD director Ashley Hawkes wrote, ‘Every page of Mansfield is so weighted with ideas, stimulating, witty, delightful, dark and confronting ideas and really all I’ve ever hoped to do is to allow them to be clearly heard’.

Mansfield’s ideas and voice did get a good hearing as part of the play’s short season as part of this year’s Sydney Fringe Festival program.

This is in large part due to a very engaging performance that Rosanna Easton gave, playing Mansfield from her time as a young woman in love with the world, enjoying the world of writing and travelling and mixing with leading literary figures right through to her untimely early demise from one of the scourges of that particular time in history, tuberculosis.

Easton held a very attentive audience in the palm of her hand as she shared some of the great writers private thoughts from her diaries and personal letters, read whole short stories and played out major scenes from her life. Alex Bryant-Smith assisted Easton by playing a whole host of characters from Mansfield’s life. Sydney cellist Simeon Johnson was also on stage providing some much appreciated musical ambience.

The venue was very much in Easton’s favour. The performance was staged upstairs at Mr Falcon’s, a new wine bar terrace house that has opened up in Glebe. There was such a great atmosphere in the intimate makeshift theatre venue which, pardon the phrase, was packed to the rafters.

It’s great that the annual Sydney Fringe Festival continues to give a voice to productions like THE CASE OF KATHERINE MANSFIELD that would otherwise be unlikely to see the light of day.

Ashley Hawkes’s production of Cathy Downes’s THE CASE OF KATHERINE MANSFIELD opened upstairs at Mr Falcon’s, 92 Glebe Point Road, Glebe on Friday 7th September and ran until Saturday 15th September, 2012.

© David Kary

23 September, 2012

Tags: Sydney Theatre Reviews- THE CASE OF KATHERINE MANSFIELD, Cathy Downes, Rosanna Easton, Ashley Hawkes, Alex Bryant-Smith, Simeon Johnson, Katherine Mansfield, Sydney Fringe Festival, Mr Falcon’s, Sydney Arts Guide, David Kary