Performing Arts

Why Me?

Presented by St. Jude’s Players
Reviewed Thursday 11th November 2010

http://www.stjudesplayers.asn.au

Venue: St, Jude’s Hall, 444 Brighton Road, Brighton

Season: 8pm Fri 12, Sat 13 & Tues 16 to Sat 20 November, 2pm Sat matinees
Duration: 2hrs 15min incl interval
Tickets: adult $19/conc $15/under 13s $7/groups 15+ $15
Bookings: ring 8270 4205 or 8296 2628 (Mon-Fri, 9am to 6pm only). Once the play opens, tickets can also be purchased at the Box Office. The Box Office opens 1 hour before each performance.

The play takes us back to the Thatcher era, a time of vast unemployment, especially in the industrial North of England. Following a company merger, John Bailey, a late middle-aged civil engineer, is made redundant, joining the “Over 3 Million Club”, as he refers to being the latest addition to the dole queue. He initially thinks that finding another job will be relatively straightforward, but it proves otherwise.

As time goes by the many rejections cause depression to set in, and this is not helped by his wife, Helen, running a successful pizza business and taking on his role as the breadwinner. He drifts into an affair with Gwen Hollis, who lives next door, a woman who feels unappreciated and ill-treated by her husband, Arthur, a builder who is going through tough times and hating his business.

In the granny flat across the hall lives John’s mother-in-law, Mary Ferguson, a rather vague old dear who pops in and out at the most inappropriate times. The final shock for John is when his son, Tom, drops in whilst on tour with his new band, a transvestite group touring the gay clubs. John finds himself reading the Book of Job and relating to the trials and tribulations that the Biblical character endured.

The script, by Stanley Price, is rather wordy, somewhat unwieldy, and has many scene changes, all of which tends to restrict the pace somewhat. Although guest Director, Kym Clayton, and his cast work hard to try to overcome this and, to some degree, they succeed, the pace could be picked up more to improve the performance. This is billed as a comedy but is, in fact, rather more of a tragicomedy. The playwright often seems a little undecided as to which way he is going with the story. As John sinks ever lower into depression and drinks frequently the eventual outcome could easily have been alcoholism and/or suicide, were it not for the employment of a deus ex machina, in which his wife sells her half of the pizza business to her business partner and starts another catering business making cheesecakes, this time involving John in her new venture, instantly curing his depression.

David Rapkin plays John as a solid family man with a good work ethic and shows us the devastating effect that unemployment has on him and his inability to cope as time goes by and circumstances worsen. He gives a creditable performance but there is much more in the script that that he could have drawn on. Joanne St. Clair, as his wife, Helen, gives a good account of herself as the self-assured and efficient business woman in a nicely controlled performance.

Isabella Norton, as Mary, walks away with every scene, getting more laughs than everybody else put together. Her experience and comic timing are much in evidence, as she makes it all look so effortless.

Vicky Horwood plays Gwen and she demonstrates plenty of range as she changes from the downtrodden wife, to an amorous lover and ends as an independent woman. Peter Smith gives us an Arthur who is crass and chauvinistic and just a wee bit thick in a most humorous characterisation. Sean Flierl, as Tom, adds a few giggles in a send-up of the manufactured images of so many bands, having switched from leather clad rocker to his new image.

Normajeane Ohlsson’s set design is extremely detailed and works very well, with Evan Pearce’s lighting and sound working very effectively, particularly on a personal basis, as I used to play most of the jazz that was featured in the play when I had my own bands.

Overall a good effort from those involved but probably not the best of scripts with its lack of clarity as to what genre it was intending itself to be. Still, a good value night out, anyway.

Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Arts Editor, Glam Adelaide.

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