Spencer by Katy Warner.
Directed by Sharon Davis. Lab Kelpie. The Q Theatre. September 19-21. Bookings: 62856290
Reviewed by Peter Wilkins
Katy Warner’s Spencer is a revelation into our souls,
our spirits, our lives and our families. Maybe we are not as characteristically
bogun or working class as the family in her play Spencer. Her family echoes another
era, conjoined with the family issues that can confront a modern family. I knew
the working class matriarch, Marilyn (Jane Clifton), the boisterous, rough-hewn
bogun adult son, Ben (Lylall Brooks), the between jobs daughter Jules (Fiona
Harris) and the top grade footy playing sensitive son Scott (Jameison Caldwell)
nd then there’s the remarried no-hoper father Ian (Roger Oakley) WE meet this disparate, dysfunctional family
on the occasion of Scott’s young son Spencer’s first visit to meet the rest of
the family. There is excitement in the air, a nervous anticipation and a
desperate desire to make the child welcome. If only everything could go smoothly.
But this is not a voyage upon
still waters. Marilyn’s sons still live at home. Sister Jules moves back to
save money and ex-husband Ian’s wife has left him, so he brings his une man tent
back to the house he left eighteen years earlier and pitches it in the
loungeroom.
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| Jameison Caldwell as Scott. Lyall Brooks as Ben. Roger Oakley as Ian |
Director Sharon Davis makes the
most of the mayhem and potential disasters that come thick and fast as
different personalities collide. Old sores fester, old habits brittle, past and
present arguments erupt and shockwave tremors expose a family’s frailties and vulnerabilities.
But Warner’s play is much more than a battleground of past regrets and present
resentments. Bogun Ben is a big kid. Scott exhibits a sensitivity that harbours
a troubled vulnerability. Jules, who, to Marilyn’s disappointment has not
produced her first grandchild, demonstrates a neglected creative artistic talent and Marilyn
keeps a firm hold on a household of adult children, whom she has raised to be decent,
likeable human beings, if at times lost and bewildered. Like the hotch-potch
diddy drawer of kitchen oddities, this is a family of behavioural and personal
oddities, that Spencer’s imminent arrival tips out of the kitchen drawer of
their lives.
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| Jane Clifton as Marilyn. Fiona Harris as Jules in Spencer |
Davis’s direction for HIT
Productions is staged with imaginative and often hilarious elan. Arguments melt
into familial familiarity and sibling rivalry is soothed by tender affection .
There is even a fragile acceptance of their Dad’s weaknesses. Designers Rob
Sowinski and Bryan Cullen’s setting and
lighting and sound hark back to an era
that I remember only too well. It is the setting of simple functional design.
There is no artifice, no opulence. Family photos hang on the wall. A
reproduction acknowledges the value of a work of art in the house and the sofa
has seen much better days.
What stifles any risk of cliché or
predictable stereotype is a company of outstanding performers, directed with a
keen eye for character and action. Lab Kelpie, an Australian new writing company,
presents a work that is rivetingly real. The characters breathe the lives of
many in their predicament, the single parent, the out of work child, the
struggling parent, the promising talent that may never be realized, sibling
conflict, loyalty and love, the no-hoper father and the consequences of one’s
actions. Warner’s Spencer is
ostensibly simple and yet the complexities within the actions and attitudes of
her family members are complex and often convoluted.
Lab Kelpie's Spencer is a funny, moving, entertaining and brilliantly acted insight
into all our lives. Warner’s simple revelation of one family in the suburbs of
Melbourne reveals a universal aspect on human nature. Here is real life amplified
to embrace the power of theatre to illuminate and comment on the human
condition. The Q Theatre is to be congratulated on including this excellent
example of new Australian playwrighting in its 2019 Season.
