There’s nothing more I enjoy than a trip down the memory
lane of the 1980’s. The decadence, the fashion, the music, the hedonism, are all
traits that are recorded in pictorial glamour of my own teenage years during that decade. And when I say glamour, I mean downright tragic choices burned into the
pages of my photo albums.
Griffin’s production of David Williamson’s ‘Emerald City’,
with its Ken Done surround set-scapes, pays homage to the hits and the colourful brush strokes of themes such as the portrayal of money over morals. Encapsulating Sydney at the time, the play features its
own tragic choices of an era that couldn’t sustain itself and lived on a diet
of pills, pomposity and speculation. Williamson’s ‘Emerald City’ is the story
of Melbourne couple Colin (Mitchell Butel) and Kate (Lucy Bell), who move to
Sydney for work and struggle to adjust to Sydney’s ruthless pursuit of the
dollar over integrity and each have to make choices about how to survive and
adapt. Amongst that, they meet Mike (Ben Winspear), whose lack of talent is no
hindrance to his ambition and he soon overleaps obstacles of expectations by
selling out the Australian Identity to acquire the Australian Dream of that ‘place
near the harbour’. Described as ‘part love letter and part hate mail to the
harbour city’, it is indeed both of those things.
This is classic Williamson which means that there is plenty
of wit and plot intrigue but there’s a little something missing in regards to
emotion. Williamson is the sledgehammer of political playwrights. What he lacks
in subtlety he makes up for in humour and social satire. There are genuine
moments of laughter that come out of this play, even if the relationships feel
more transactional than truthful.
Butel and Bell bring an air of Melbourne superiority
to their characters and tackle the tension of the clash of cultures and the
status transition of their marriage with the skill of actors who have been at
the top of their game for a long time. Winspear’s Mike was not so deftly
portrayed. Replacing Marcus Graham in the last stages of rehearsal (does anyone
else have a problem imagining Graham as Mike?), Winspear’s strained accent felt
like he was pushing too hard. Director Lee Lewis should have helped him pull
back as Mike is already ‘overpainted’, like a Done harbour portrait, and it
meant that the gruff confident idiocy of Mike becomes a caricature of himself
in a world where he was already bordering on that anyway. It’s too much and at
times, hard to watch. Jennifer Hagan’s Elaine captured the comedy and has some
of the best lines. Pity Hagan didn’t always land them and there were some flustered
moments when it looked as if the actors were line grabbing to get back on
track. Kelly Paterniti as Helen read as a young casting choice and gave an
interesting dramatic interpretation to the seedy superficiality of Sydney when the ingénue lusted after by the men of the play looks barely legal. But Williamson at least gives some intelligence and depth
to his female characters in ‘Emerald City’ and the direct audience addresses do go some way to expressing vulnerability
and intentions as the plot unfolds.
The first thing that does catch your eye as you walk into
the space is the Ken Done design, done by the Done himself. It’s as colourful
as you remember and captures the Australian kaleidoscope of light, bright,
gaudy glamour of the era. Sophie Fletcher’s costumes, by contrast, try to tone
down the excess of the era by giving a stylish sense of the time- lacking in
pretension and playing to the alternative artsy intelligence of Melbournian orphans
in the social cyclone of Sydney. Whilst the costumes don’t speak specifically
of the time, the set well and truly does all the work and allows for a subdued
design vision in other areas.
Lewis has given a faithful rendition of a Williamson classic
and apart from refining some of the bigger and brasher choices that push the
play into one-dimensional -stereotypes (more Warwick Capper than Christopher
Skase), she’s made a good fist of it.
It’s good to see the season finish with an old-school Australian
play that reminds us of our canon of classics and our theatrical and social history.
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