Reviews

Heidelberg Theatre Company has done an apt job of bringing Jane Austen’s beloved classic to life on stage. On opening night, the house appeared full and the production seemed well prepared.

The show opens with a jovial scene of Regency-period dancing. The cast showed good mastery of Dianne Mileo’s choreography. The men looked particularly dashing in their officers’ uniforms. The Fortepiano added atmosphere and authenticity to the production.

Jennifer Jones (Sarah Sutherland) and Bob Jones (Neil Piggot) sit under a night sky, somewhere in small town USA.  It’s so quiet ‘you can hear the clouds passing’.  Their stilted conversation suggests at first a marriage that has, maybe, run its course, but you sense that there is something else, something sadder than lack of communication.  Jennifer, we’ll come to understand, is, in her own quietly desperate way, heroic, and there’s more to Bob than a blunt curmudgeon.  They are interrupted by their new neighbours, Pony Jones (Elsa Caldwell

This once controversial, and even banned, play by Noël Coward, is a delightful time capsule of upper class life in the 1930s. Still funny and cleverly penned, it is playing to capacity audiences at the Old Mill Theatre.

In discussing her collaboration with Goddard, Dee explains that, “From the outset, neither of us wanted to create a ‘bonnet drama’.” This beautifully and thoughtfully presented play is in no danger of appearing superficial in its depiction of the dark side of Australia’s colonial past.

The story is based on a chance discovery of Goddard’s previously unknown convict ancestor and the hardships she endured during her seven-year sentence in the Cascades Female Factory in Hobart Town during the 1830s-1840s.