Big Girls Don’t Cry
Drawing on stories told by her old relatives, this first play by actor Darala Williams is about three Aboriginal girls in Sydney’s Redfern chasing happiness and asserting their right to love, joy and freedom. It’s the days of the 1965 Freedom Rides, the 1967 Referendum, the war in Vietnam and a new wave of Indigenous and community organisation.
The play’s greatest strength are the three girls, the self-possessed Cheryl (Williams herself), swapping letters with Michael (Matthew Cooper) serving in Vietnam, shy Lulu (Stephanie Sommerville), and an expansive Queenie (the magnificent Megan Wilding). In an engaging first act the three banter, preen and flirt with boys at the local, the constraints of racism never far, but it’s a sunny linear narrative – if edging close to soapie.
Cheryl is slowly won away from Michael’s letters by Milo, an infatuated Italo-Australian (Nic English) who, despite a past mistake, must prove he supports Indigenous grievances. Luckily the ever-convincing Guy Simon plays Cheryl’s activist brother Ernie, given the excess speechifying Williams writes for him, and herself. Much of that should be left to an obscene act of racial violence, with a bullying cop (Bryn Chapman Parish), but oddly the full horror is missing.
Act 2 touches on other Indigenous challenges, but Ian Michael’s production is on firmer ground focusing on the girls seeking a place in the world and to look perfect for the community’s top annual event, the formal ball in tuxedos and long white dresses.
Ending with an echo of Shakespearean rom-com, Lulu gets hitched, Michael returns from Vietnam at the wrong time but is a gentleman, and Ernie and Queenie drop their endless haggling and fall into each other’s arms. It’s an unlikely match but produces the best scene of the play – much as the feuding lovers, Beatrice and Benedick, do in Much Ado About Nothing.
Stephen Curtis creates an evocative background of ghostly brick terraces, with action and furniture changes across a busy revolve. Emma White’s dresses are deliciously 1960’s as is Brendon Boney’s music. Big Girl’s Don’t Cry is an impressive first play but with just these fond stories it is over long at nearly three hours.
Martin Portus
Photographer: Stephen Wilson
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