THREE TALL WOMEN

 

 Three Tall Women by Edward Albee.

Directed and designed by Sophie Benassi. Movement director. Ylaria Rogers.Lighting design Stephen Still. Sound designe. Neville Pye. Production manager. Bel Henderson. Stage manager. Sophia Carlton. Chaika Theatre Company. ACTHUB. 18 Spinifex Street Kingston.May 11-21 2022. Bookings: the littleboxoffice.com/acthub/.

Reviewed by Peter Wilkins

Canberra’s newest theatre company has opened ACTHUB’s inaugural 2022 season with Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women. Albee’s Pulitzer Prize –winning play receives an exciting and outstanding production from newly created  professional theatre company Chaika. Chaika is the Russian word for seagull and on opening night I saw the new company take wings and soar to extraordinary heights. It was not only because of Albee’s intricately woven play about one woman at different stages of her life played by three female actors. Albee’s poignant and probing play about life and death, hopes and dreams, frustrations and failures may not be to everybody’s taste. However, we are compelled in this riveting performance to confront our own attitude to the ages of life and the inevitable mortality.

Natasha Vickery as C. Lainie Hart as B in Three Tall Women

What is extraordinary in Chaika’s Three Tall Women is the quality of the acting from the three of Canberra’s finest. Karen Vickery plays the wealthy woman A in her declining years and the same woman before her decline. Lainie Hart is the younger woman B in her early Fifties and Natasha Vickery plays the woman C in her Twenties.  Blue Hyslop appears as the silent son, visiting the dying mother’s bedside behind a scrim in homage to the ever present final curtain. In Act One Vickery plays the wealthy old widow, suffering incontinence and memory loss with the consequent afflictions of ascerbic irritability and obstinacy. Hart plays her companion and Natasha Vickery is the young lawyer’s assistant intent on sorting out the old woman’s affairs. This is Vickery’s Act. From the outset she commands attention, embodying the horror of infirmity and decline. The second act is more evenly balanced as we are introduced to the same woman at different stages of her life. All three appear in furs, suggesting affluence and a certain assurance.  It also identifies them as the same person at different ages.Albee transcends time. Reality is cloaked in the symbolism of life’s parading changes. Director Sophie Benassi sensitively guides the performances, ensuring that each actor captures the individual qualities of their age. Pacing and timing are the hallmarks of Benassi’s work with her actors.  C is excited by the prospect of the future while also being shocked by the vision of the future in A and B.  “I’ll never become you” And of course she does. B balances on the cusp, emerging in middle age with an acquired confidence in who she is that feeds her cynicism. Vickery’s wife of the short man with the glass eye confronts her aging with defiance  and the assumed privilege of her wealth. It may at times be difficult to follow the shifting and prevailing attitudes of each age in the woman’s life but the three remarkable ensemble performances by Vickery, Hart and Natasha Vickery provoke thoughtful consideration. Hyslop’s presence captures the mystique of family conflict and unresolved tension. He is in a sense the symbol of the woman’s failure.

The production, appropriately played on the proscenium in the intimate ACTHUB refurbished Causeway Hall is ideally suited to Albee’s investigation of life and death The play weaves an intricate web of connections that reveal one woman’s passage through time but also resonates with each of our lives as we take the same inevitable journey.

Karen Vickery as A in Three Tall Women

Three Tall Women is set in New York. Neville Pye’s sound design introduces  Movement director Ylaria Rogers’ opening silhouette of the three tall women with Frank Sinatra’s celebratory rendition of New York New York and his fatalistic That’s Life.  As A leaves the stage Edith Piaf’s iconic and resigned Non, Je ne Regrette Rien is A’s  philosophical acknowledgement that  life’s journey is transitory and unavoidable . Ironically she also regard death as the happiest moment of her life. Pye also subtly introduces the sounds of hooves, reverberating in the old woman’s memory and the regular rhythm of heartbeats that pulse away life’s time. There is a sombre profound tone to Albee’s dialogue. Listen closely and your life is echoed in the text.

This is a beautifully orchestrated performance of Albee’s witty, poignant, reflective  and occasionally cynical reminder that “one man (and woman) in his (and her) time plays many parts.” Chaika’s star has risen and it shines brightly on Canberra’s theatrical landscape. I look forward to their next production with eager antici-pation. Three Tall Women is the third play that I have seen staged at ACTHUB. Lakespeare’s As You Like It, Alchemy Artistic’s The Boys and Chaika’s Three Tall Women firmly cement Canberra’s newest theatre venue as the home of outstanding local productions performed and produced by outstanding local artists.  This really is theatre “not to be missed.”