Playwright: Tom Davis
Director: Caroline Stacey
Design: Imogen Keen
Sound Design:
Kimmo Vennonen
Lighting
Design: Gillian Schwab
Presented
by: The Street
Street Theatre,
Canberra until 29th November 2015
Reviewed by
Bill Stephens
Melbourne
playwright, Tom Davis’ compelling play of family excoriation receives an epic production
for its premiere season at The Street Theatre.
Though set
during a dinner in Richmond in 2010, the action of the play moves swiftly
between locations as diverse as a Melbourne tram stop in 1975, a Budapest
apartment in 1938, Nazi-occupied Budapest in 1944, Communist Hungary in 1956, a
dance hall in Prahran in 1963 and a Richmond lounge-room in 1995. There are
scenes in the streets of Budapest during the 1956 Hungarian uprising, on the
Chain Bridge of the title.
All these
location transitions and time changes are achieved with remarkable clarity and ingenuity
under the sure hand of director Caroline Stacey who utilises an extraordinarily
flexible set encompassing the whole expanse of the Street Theatre stage, outstanding
sound and lighting, and an accomplished cast of just five actors, Geraldine
Turner, Peter Cook, Kate Hosking, Zsuzsi Soboslay and PJ Williams, all of whom
play multiple characters so convincingly that the audience is persuaded that it is watching
epic scenes with a cast of hundreds as the stories unfold.
 |
| The Chain Bridge L-R. Kate Hosking, PJ Williams, Zsuzsi Soboslay, Peter Cook, Geraldine Turner Photo: Lorna Sim |
Turner
dominates the play in a tour-de force performance as Eva, the mother of Imre (Peter Cook), an academic struggling to write a book about his family’s Budapest history,
which he hopes will save both his career and his marriage. However, before the
book can be published some inconsistencies between his mother's stories and the history
have to be sorted. In a last ditch attempt to establish the truth, and against
the wishes of his wife, Sarah, (Kate Hosking), Imre invites his mother, and her
two best friends, Katalin and her husband Jozsef, (Zsuzsi Soboslay and PJ
William) to dinner with explosive results.
Many of the
disclosures are harrowing and the depictions of them distressing. The play
provides riveting theatre, but because of the intense demands it makes on the audiences' concentration, it is too long and would benefit from some judicious
cutting. Once it becomes obvious, in the cataclysmic "Fuck History" scene, that Imre’s
search for the real truth will never be satisfied, everything that follows feels unnecessary and superflous.
But see it
for yourself. “The Chain Bridge” is a
haunting play, brilliantly staged for this production, with memorable performances from five outstanding actors. It will stay in your mind for months to come.
This review also appears in Australian Arts Review.
