Lucky Numbers

Many of us dream of winning the lottery and sadly watch our hopes crumble as numbers are read - not our own. This little light-hearted farce, Lucky Numbers by Mike Yeaman at Tea Tree Players, is certainly an unexpected lottery win. Delightfully funny and creating many giggles on a cold wet night, this story of a misplaced lottery ticket is sure to please.

Damon Hill has assembled a capable cast who deliver the witty lines well, hurtling around the stage in those well-loved farce chase and hiding routines. Whilst on the night I attended, the pace was a little slow in places, the general story is carried along well and the audience demonstrated their approval by much laughter. The set, also designed by Damon Hill and constructed by a large collaborative team, is beautifully dressed and open. It is the epitome of a middle-class British home.

The story centres around a very dysfunctional family - a mother, who is having an affair; a layabout husband; an equally layabout son obsessed with video games; and a daughter who is part emo, part goth. Throw into this mix, Nana, seemingly quite senile and incredibly conniving, and you have the ingredients for a very messed up evening!

Nana has won the lottery and the family are ecstatic. The twist is, however, that Nana won’t disclose the ticket’s whereabouts and frankly, no one is certain that she even knows where she hid it herself, or if she even bought it in the first place. She hatches a plan to make this family reform their behaviour before she will share the ticket with them. We, the audience, watch haplessly wanting to yell ‘It’s in the vase… it’s in your pocket… it’s on the table!’ as the ticket is moved constantly around the set, the family oblivious to its whereabouts.

Lisa Wilton ably plays the mother, Janice, and brings a commendable level of light and shade as she vacillates between being frustrated wife trying to hide her affair to actually caring about her aging mother. Her husband, Sean Venning, delivers a suitably immobile lazy husband, despite a fluctuating British accent. The two teenage children are Abbey Mae as the goth daughter Lisa and Lachlan Blackwell as Steven. Mae brings very funny physicality to her character, and is particularly amusing teetering on heels for the first time. Blackwell’s couch potato character is well played and kudos for acting under hot stage lights in a fat suit! Steve Mulady’s performance as the ineffectual lover has great comic timing - particularly in the ‘sleeping bag scene’. Shane, Lisa’s punk boyfriend, is very well played by Kyle McCarthy and his scene with Nana, who flirts with him and comments on his multi coloured mohawk, mistaking it for a parrot, is a riot.

The standout performance in the play, however, is given by Heather Riley, who plays Nana. Her character is believable. She moves as an old woman (despite being significantly younger in real life) and has the audience falling apart at her very dryly delivered lines. She resists the temptation to overplay this character and this realism is what makes her work comedy gold.

We realise by the end of the play that perhaps Nana’s dottiness is not what it seems to be and that her memory lapses are possibly intentional. A beautifully delivered monologue at the end of the play poignantly makes us all take a breath and reflect upon growing old.

This is an enjoyable night of theatre. Despite its farcical comedy, Lucky Numbers does leave us with messages about looking after our elderly and seeing beneath the loss of memory, repetitive conversations and behaviours (and not just because they may be hiding a lottery ticket) but maybe, many more riches in which we should share.

Shelley Hampton