 |
| Daniel Greiss (Mike) and Hanna Lance (Helen) in "Emerald City". |
Written by
David Williamson – Directed by Anne Somes – Set Design by Cate Clelland
Costume
Design by Fiona Leach – Lighting Design by Chris Ward – Sound Design by Justin
Mullins – Original Music by Alexander Unikowski.
ACT HUB –
June 8 – 22nd 2022.
Performance
on 11th June reviewed by Bill Stephens.
David
Williamson’s scathing satire on the film and publishing industries is the third
production presented in Canberra’s newest theatre venue, the ACT Hub, and
confirms initial positive impressions of the value to Canberra’s burgeoning theatre
scene of this cosy intimate, venue.
“Emerald
City” was premiered by the Sydney Theatre Company in 1987, and performed later
the same year in the Canberra Theatre with an all-star cast which included John
Bell, Ruth Cracknell, Robyn Nevin, Drew Forsythe, Andrea Moor and Dennis Grosvenor.
It is
therefore an interesting choice for Director Anne Somes to introduce Free Rain
Theatre at the ACT Hub. Somes too has assembled an excellent cast who do justice
to a play which Williamson admits is loosely based on his own life at the time,
and which now represents an interesting microcosm of middle-class society in
Sydney at that time.
 |
| Victoria Tyrrell Dixon (Kate) - Isaac Reilly (Colin) in "Emerald City" |
“Emerald
City” looks at the lives of six upwardly mobile people living in Sydney in the
1980’s. Their lives are centred on screenwriter, Colin (played in this production
by Isaac Riley) who is struggling with a mid-career crisis. Surrounding Colin is his literary agent wife,
Kate, (Victoria Tyrell Dixon) who is lobbying for a Booker Prize for a novel by
her aboriginal client ; Colin’s hard-nosed
agent, Elaine (Helen McFarlane) who is worried that Colin’s writing might be on
the wane; an unscrupulous hack-writer Mike, (Daniel Greiss) who’s persuaded Colin to team
with him to script a mildly successful television series ; Mike’s worldly young
girl-friend Helen (Hannah Lance) to whom Colin finds himself attracted; and Malcolm,(Patrick Collins) a producer and
sometimes financier of Colin’s projects.
 |
| Helen McFarlane as Elaine in "Emerald City" |
Through
these characters Williamson, after raising the hackles of his audience by
commencing his play with a discussion between Colin and Kate comparing the virtues
of Sydney and Melbourne, demonstrates his mastery of the idiom by having them
indulge in a succession of arguments in which they question each other’s integrity
in relation to their work ethics, parenting and morals.
During these
arguments his characters frequently address the audience directly or indulge in
inner-dialogues while coping with their own responses to the wounding and witty
ripostes of their adversaries, in wordy arguments which nevertheless remain as
relevant today as they were in the 1980’s.
Williamson
has the gift of creating easily relatable characters and in the hands of this fine
ensemble cast they are brought vividly to life costumed by Fiona Leach in
stylish 1980’s fashion in an elegant two-level setting designed by Cate
Clelland which deftly accommodates the various locales required.
But given
the overall excellence of the production it seemed a pity that more imaginative
solutions weren’t attempted to the staging challenges posed by the many locale
changes other than simply having the actors walk on and off the stage, or that
more attention wasn’t paid to character’s responses which sometimes made it
unclear which of the monologues were interior thoughts and which were
conversation.
Those
reservations apart, with “Emerald City”,
Free Rain Theatre has succeeded in producing a highly entertaining
and sophisticated production of one of the best plays in the canon of Australia’s
most celebrated playwrights.
Images by Cathy Breen
