Are you in the mood to see a good, solid production of a classic of the Australian theatre?! If you are, then get yourself over to the Newtown Theatre to see the Impulse Theatre Company’s current revival of John Misto’s 1995 play, ‘The Shoe-Horn Sonata’.

Australian Army nurses and other women who survived capture and imprisonment in Japanese prisoner of war camps in South East Asia during World War 2 came back determined to have their stories told. Through works such as ‘The Shoe-Horn Sonata’ their stories found a voice that will now always be heard.

Misto’s tribute play pivots around the first meeting, in over fifty years, to take place between two women, Bridie (Lisa Peers) and Sheila (Janine Penfold), who were teenage girls and close friends, interred in a prisoner of war camp in the jungles of Sumatra, where many women and children died. They meet up as a result of being asked to participate in a television documentary about the POW experiences. Whilst the series is being filmed, the television company pays for them to share an inner city hotel room.

With living at such close quarters, and reflecting on such a traumatic period in their lives, it is a very emotionally charged and hence very dramatic time for both women. The play mainly turns on the back-story as to why the two women have not been in touch for so long. The play’s title refers to the shoe-horn that Bridie’s father gave her before the war becomes a catalyst for Bridie and Sheila’s survival.

Stephen Wallace direction is taut, and he wins clear, focused performances from both Peers and Penfold. The role of the television interviewer, Rick, is again played by voice-over (Graeme Rhodes). Wallace keeps to the play’s original staging with the stage area comprising a typical hotel room, a television recording studio, and a large screen on which some archival images are projected.

A poignantly told survivor’s story, Impulse Theatre’s production plays the Newtown Theatre, corner King and Bray streets until March 28.