The Bondi Festival is such fun. The ice-skating rink, the Ferris wheel, the two young women dressed as oily lift-repairers who surprise you as the lift doors open to take you up to the Bondi Pavilion Theatre. Everyone is in a cheery mood.

But WATERLOO, the one-woman play in the theatre, is quite the opposite. As the PR blurb explains: “Simulated violence, real and replica weapons, coarse language, loud noises and explosions and smoke effects.”  So don’t take the children. Or the teenagers.

Bron Batten, the playwright-actor-director, knew her topic well and presented the story by speaking directly to the audience.  As contemporary theatre, there are well-timed gimmicks, audience participation and lots of balloons, all in an attempt to expose our human fascination with destruction – emotional, material, personal and political. Her attempt at this big world topic is strained.

Bron’s play and performance has won numerous awards at fringe festivals around the world.  It’s an age-old story of an independent woman falling in love and having lots of interesting sex with a powerful but wounded man (he’s fought in Afghanistan). Then she discovers he is married. It’s a true story – Bron’s affair and then her despair. After discovering her lover has a wife, she wants him still. Further, she tells the audience that during her arts residency in Paris, she wasted taxpayers’ money by simply exploring the joys of Paris, including the sex.  It’s all about her affair, with a commendable attempt to explore humanity’s sacrifice to war.

So it’s a mixed bag. Lots of laughter, military references, knife pointing and popping of balloons.  

PERFORMANCE TIMES:

Tonight (8 July) at 7pm
Sun 9 July at 5pm

Review  by Carol Dance