Girls & Boys

It can be fun not knowing anything about a play/production before seeing it. But this is different: no programs available, no information about the author, not even a name on the poster. Come on, it can’t be bad with Justine Clarke in it and coming from a 2022 run with the State Theatre Company South Australia.

First time I’d been to the Everest Theatre, which seats 550, and it’s pretty full, no doubt because of Justine. As it turns out, it’s a one-woman show. There’s no curtain and the setting is like a foyer outside a movie showing, with a large sofa and chairs. She enters, hair up and wearing a comfortable summery top over orangey slacks... and we are hooked for the next two hours.

We never know her name but she starts with funny stories about her younger, directionless self, and tells how she met and fell for her husband while boarding an easyJet flight at Naples airport. He puts a couple of queue-jumping models hilariously in their place, and the relationship takes off from there. 

In a tour de force, Clarke is brilliant at engaging the audience, charting the gradations of her relationship with this man who runs a thriving business importing antique wardrobes. Meanwhile she cons her way into a job as a development executive in TV documentaries. 

Her growing sense of self-worth contrasts with his growing business failures. We soon meet their two small children, Leanne and Danny, and a play that starts as comedy begins a slow, steady descent into the bleakest depths of tragedy. 

There is precious little help from the setting. At an early point the back wall disappears, revealing three stacks of bits and pieces – toys, sweets, books, etc. At no point does the setting show the woman’s striving for domesticity, for success, or anything much.

The play, it turns out, is an English import and has been written by Dennis Kelly, author of Matilda the Musical. It was directed by the State Theatre’s artistic director, Mitchell Butel. 

Justine Clarke gets the English accent exactly right. In fact, to this particular audience, she gets everything exactly perfect.

Frank Hatherley

Photographer: Matt Byrne.