On entering the intimate Stables Theatre we are confronted with a set basically comprising a bed with a man and a woman in it. The intimacy rises a notch, but is botched as the lights go down and the coital capers, aiming for comedy, come as anticlimactically coy, as the two are shown to be dramatically overdressed for such between the sheets shenanigans. Notch botched by covered crotch!
It’s a no ball, merely setting up the pitch of the play, that of a country girl in the big smoke of Sydney experiencing alienation and loss, compensating by binge drinking and indiscriminate sex.
The play gets back to the crease in the second scene where we are introduced to the girl’s father, a cricket loving codger, appearing in her life after some absence and brokering a reunion and reconciliation.
It is here where the deft bowling and batting of Jane Bodie’s dialogue takes flight, getting the emotional runs on the board. As Dad takes her through the way of the wicket, Ellen continues to allow a series of men have their wicked way. A not so maiden over, out for a duck.
Tony Llewellyn –Jones has a field day with the cricket obsessed father, delivering a delectable and verbally dexterous performance – the “silly” talk is really quite clever – with the subtle nuance and gravitas desired to pull off one of the major googlies of the play.
Ellen is played with a tangible fragility by Belinda Bromilow, haunted, troubled, and seemingly unable to connect with her sex partners or the city in the cold, sober light of morning.
The men, panoply of personalities ranging from the pathetic bully boy to the sensitive, sympathetic and slightly socially gauche are all played by Nathan Lovejoy, using a simmering, sinewy palette to shade the characters. His jocular jock hunting shtick – all bare bum and bollocks in starkers contrast to the opening scrotal decorum- is a nice play on trying to take your trousers off over your head routine.
Rita Carmody’s set makes very good use of the space, with its sparse bedsit veneer, the bed astride a patch of turf protruding through the floorboards. It’s not only symbolic but literally pitches us into the narrative in the second act.
I’m not sure that THIS YEAR’S ASHES, well directed by Shannon Murphy, is quite the cutting edge theatre that Griffin boasts in its marketing. The phrase is so hackneyed and coddled with cliché it has lost its currency.
Though maybe not the prime of Jane Bodie, happily, THIS YEAR’S ASHES is not hackneyed nor clichéd, and cutting edge or not, (although it could do with a bit of cutting –over 2 hours with interval was a bit too much of a good thing) this production showcases three exceptional acting talents, a virtual thespian hat-trick, declared!
Shannon Murphy’s production of Jane Bodie’s THIS YEAR’S ASHES opened at the Stables theatre, Nimrod street, Kings Cross on Friday 7th October and runs until Saturday 19th November, 2011.
© Richard Cotter
13th October, 2011
Tags: THIS YEAR’S ASHES, Stables Theatre, Jane Bodie, Shannon Murphy, , Belinda Bromilow, Nathan Lovejoy, Tony Llewellyn-Jones, Rita Carmody, Brett Boardman, cricket, The Ashes.