Reviewed by Frank McKone
February 1
Creatives
Playwright: David Williamson
Director: Janine Watson; Assistant Director: Anna Houston
Set & Costume Designer: Rose Montgomery
Lighting Designer: Matt Cox
Composer & Sound Designer: David Bergman
Operatic Voice Coach: Donna Balson
Intimacy Coordinator: Chloë Dallimore
Cast
Monique - Tracy Mann
Her sons:
Charlie - Rowan Davie Liam - Jack Starkey-Gill Daniel - Sam O’Sullivan
Their wives:
Midge - Tamara Lee Bailey Chrissy - Suzannah McDonald Judy - Danielle King
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David Williamson is only just a year younger than me, so when I say Aria is as good as the best of the old David Williamson, you know what I mean. It’s full of the rapid and incisive repartee of Don’s Party but with the social and political world brought up to date.
And of course it’s funny, with his traditional one-liners – often causing us to universally groan while we laugh – and yet it’s a comedy, though never black, which brings out the honest reality to the third generation of this middle class family.
Way back in The Department (1975) as the play ends Owen announces “It’s a girl” to add to his “four bloody boys already.” And goes on “Boys are okay when they’re little, but by the time they’re about six they’re testing themselves out against you all the time. I haven’t got the energy to cope with another.”
And I hear Chrissy, the wife of Monique’s son, the ambitious never-at-home politician Liam, being accused of not disciplining her children and – in our social media world – in tears of frustration because they take no notice and just answer her back. She wanted to be a teacher. I hear the very same story from teachers today, in classrooms full of devices.
The beauty of Williamson’s writing is how we even end up feeling sorry for the deluded over-the-top capitalist Monique, singing Mozart's Queen’s aria which never made her the Maria Callas she believed she should have been, except that love, for her three boys, got in the way.
Ensemble Theatre, of course, has done the right thing again by providing the best in directing, designing and coaching for, in my view, an extraordinary team of actors. The force of their energy as a group enlivens everyone as if Hayes Gordon is still here in his wonderful in-the-round acting space (and I am old enough to have seen him there at work).
But much more than that, even, is each actor’s terrific awareness of the meaning of every word in Williamson’s script – not merely in their character’s personality, but so clearly motivated as to why they speak (or don’t) in their relationships with the other characters – and even further bringing out the implications in the metaphors which Williamson leaves implicit.
Aria is exciting theatre of the very best kind – and kindness is what we need so much more of today. At 84 it makes me charged with hope again by such great work from a mere 83-year-old.
Please don’t miss it!
