Bombshells

Empathic, hilarious, and incorporating song and dance, Joanna Murray-Smith’s Bombshells is a wonderful choice for Echo Theatre’s Jordan Best’s superb comedic sense and feminist outlook. Murray-Smith has an ability to capture heartbreakingly authentic emotional dialogue, which is a large part of the global success of her play Honour. In Bombshells, she takes that dialogue internal to create a wry comedy about the lies we tell ourselves and the ways we survive life’s traumas.

The beauty of Best’s direction here is the warmth with which the characters are drawn. In spite of being flawed, self-deceiving, vain or petty, these women are completely sympathetic. We laugh with them, not at them. The play opens on Meryl (Amy Kowalczuk), who struggles to manage an eight-year-old, a toddler and a baby at the breast. She is so surrounded by clutter on the stage that she can barely move, which is utterly relatable, but gives the challenge that all the energy needs to come from the delivery of the dialogue. Amy Kowalczuk delivers in spades, bringing out the humour by interweaving a frenetic pace with perfectly timed beats. Kate Harris brings a baleful irony to her character Tiggy, who after a messy breakup has sworn off men in favour of cacti. Ella Buckley imbues new bride Theresa with an inner excitement verging on hysteria, which we understand once she has an epiphany immediately before saying “I do”.

Sally Taylor’s school talent quest entrant Mary is conceited and competitive, but also genuinely talented. It’s funny not because she’s dancing badly but because she’s dancing inappropriately (congratulations to the choreographer pulling that off). Alice Ferguson’s dignified and nuanced performance of the widow Winsome was so beautifully done, she drew applause in the middle of her speech. And Lanie Hart as aging jazz bombshell Zoe Struthers was simply fabulous and surprisingly complex and nuanced. 

If I have one complaint, it was that the aforementioned cluttered set which constrained movement, especially on the Q’s narrow stage. The decision would have been to sacrifice room for seamless scene changes and I’m not sure whether it was worth it. However they did take advantage of all the cast being on stage during those scene changes by briefly illuminating the other characters in short flashes from their lives, which was a delightful little detail. Also interesting was the surprising way that the play has aged. There are issues of autonomy and consent which have changed for the better in the most part since the play was written twenty years ago.

Echo Theatre’s affectionate production of Bombshells is a romp, which I thoroughly enjoyed and heartily recommend.

Cathy Bannister