Dear Diary
Kay Proudlove brings to Adelaide her stories of growing up in New South Wales. Her teenage diary is the source of tales from personal Spice Worlds to underage drinking, first crushes to first guitar, sharing her tender, naïve, and sometimes painful memories with us. Proudlove’s infectious personality brings us close, and there’s plenty of knowing chuckles with the familiarity of growing up in the nineties, being worried about the shape of your body, desperate for certain boys to notice you, and how there’s always a girl who seems to have it all figured out.
A triptych of laden clothes racks frame the stage, and together with a stickered guitar case and cardboard boxes these bring the audience into her childhood bedroom, but Proudlove doesn’t need the props to propel her tales. Thomas Doyle’s lighting design may pull our attention, but it’s held by Proudlove’s unashamedly constant engagement with every person in the audience.
Punctuated with her own witty and clever songs that are not only lyrically strong but continue the narrative, the humour is always present, yet the nostalgia is never far away. It’s rarely sentimental though, and whilst there are moments of darkness that threaten to take the story in a different direction, it gives her stories shades of grey, even as it consistently veers to the positive. Proudlove is thankful for her awareness now of things that seemed innocent then.
The nineties references make her punchlines sharper to knowing women, but there’s still plenty to soak up and chuckle at if you’re from a different time or gender.
This is great storytelling in words and music from Proudlove: she lives up to her name, adoring the girl she was and confident in the woman she has become.
Review by Mark Wickett
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