Honour

Honour was first performed at the CUB Malthouse in 1995, yet the events Joanna Murray-Smith depicts with such insight could just as well have happened last week.  Perhaps a wife with a successful career of her own would not so willingly give it up to nurture and support her now famous husband’s – but psychologically the truth of that persists.  Whose career takes precedence even today?

George ((Peter Houghton), famous journalist, public intellectual, is interviewed by pretty, subtly flirtatious, much younger up-and-coming writer Claudia (Ella Ferris).  Absurdly flattered and – let’s face it – sexually disturbed, George tells his wife of thirty-two years, Honor (Caroline Lee) that he’s leaving her.  He offers the sort of slightly incoherent, self-serving rationalisations that men in these situations do.  And soon he is living with Claudia and taking her to book launches. ‘Decorum’ is abandoned. Honor and George’s university student daughter, Sophie (Lucinda Smith), is appalled – but that’s more because she’s been robbed of one of her life’s certainties...  And Claudia is one of those bright young things that Murray-Smith does so well – not, in fact, as confident – or clever – as she might want us to think.

Designer Jacob Battista emphasises the timelessness of the story with his utterly bare, open-on-three sides white platform box, plus two straight back chairs.  The cast remain on stage, beside the platform if not in a scene, but always there and eye contact between those on stage and those off acknowledges the range of effects of each character on another character.  This intentional but charged simplicity means that the pace never slackens, and transitions are so fluid as to be almost unnoticeable.

The cast is excellent, but one must say it’s Caroline Lee’s night.  She charts every changing emotion with piercing accuracy – from lulled complacency to inarticulate incredulity, to rage, to resignation, to devastating, bitchy fighting back...  to rebuilding and reclaiming herself...  And she takes us with her every step.

Michael Brindley

Photographer: James Reiser