A beaut sunny day. I met up with Pawel for a mid-afternoon coffee at Cabrito and had another at the Studio Cafe at the Sydney Opera House closer to time, after reading a bit more Peter Carey in the Botanic Gardens. For some reason there were loads of dolled-up young ladies out with their oldies (mums and grandmums), gloriously, indifferently blocking the pedestrian flows. My bag got checked twice on my way to seat C13 in the Drama Theatre. That spot is B grade ($75 + $7.50 booking fee = $82.50, booked 2018-11-22) but OK if you're tall; the stage was slightly above my eye level, and I could see its floor if I stretched. Packed.
The draw was to see a Patrick White play I hadn't seen before. Briefly we get a woman of "militant virtue," Miss Docker, who outlives her landlady then outstays her welcome with a middle-aged couple only to end up in an old-people's home. The opening scene is one of 1950s realism, similar in this way to The Ham Funeral; the intricate rotating set has a period stove, and the housewife recounts the dishes from my 1980s childhood: lemon delicious, macaroni cheese. After that things get surreal and internalised, and possibly shocking in its day; now it seems dismal and dated. Humour flees at some point, and it is clearly difficult to keep this uneven piece moving along. The focus on the mores of the Anglican Church is very stale: there are plenty more things to do on Sundays now than endure an inarticulate pastor. Ultimately it degenerates to a series of skits with little discernible message for us. I found the witchy chorus tiresome, and Miss Docker mostly a pile of tics. This urban horrorshow is not very deep but probably easy for many to feel pity for or superiority to. It has a modernity like the Opera House: externally promising but internally inferior, ruefully signalling what once could have been.
On the redeeming side of the ledger, I did enjoy director Kip Williams's use of live video, which was more effective than the last thing I saw by him: some classic noir shots and effective compositions. Nikki Shiels, last seen in They Divided The Sky, was effective in all her roles, but had it better in that two hander. Bruce Spence stopped up many but not all of the gaps. The cross dressing sometimes worked.
I grabbed a quick Maccas after.
Jason Blake. Julian Meyrick on the play itself. Steve Dow spends more time on history than this production. John Shand was glued to his chair. Diana Simmonds. Kevin Jackson digs into Williams's preference for style over substance.