Maureen: Harbinger of Death

Imagine afternoon tea (minus the food and drink) with an Aussie Aunty Mame. Rather than raising you, Maureen Daly shares her most enlightening, intimate and very personal stories to ensure that you could pen, or at least tell an exaggerated version of her marvellous, zany and off-beat life. She is very clear that she does not want to be eclipsed by someone glamorous like Cate Blanchett playing her in a theatre piece, disappointed though Cate may be. Maureen’s life is an amalgam of fabulous older women, their highs, their lows, and importantly, it is about life in the tacky heydays of Sydney’s legendary Kings Cross. Maureen lives in a beautifully decorated flat (Isabel Hudson’s 1930’s draped living room is worth the admission price) opposite Buckingham Palace (no, not that one), a building in The Cross so named because it is ‘full of Queens!’ The set is subtly and cleverly lit by Nick Schlieper, skilled multi-Arts lighting who shows Maureen at her very best.

One could be forgiven for not flocking to a show called Maureen: Harbinger of Death but it is anything but deathly dull. Carefully recorded in a neat note-book that is passed around the audience, we discover that in her latter years, Maureen has the uncanny knack of predicting the death of her friends including Bunny Ash, who she met when she was ‘doing windows in New York’. Bunny’s spectacular death in the arms of a well-known Aussie hunk is laugh out loud material.

Co-created with skilled director Nell Ranney, this 1 hour and 20-minute mesmerising monologue is created and performed by WAPPA trained actor and DJ Jonny Hawkins. Hawkins literally morphs from the gently spoken visitor into Maureen, blending seamlessly with the décor, suddenly introducing the garrulous, acerbic self-described “working class glamour queen”, and it is a lesson in brilliant costuming by Hudson and finely crafted acting by Hawkins. No detail is ignored, the fluttering hands, the tissue up the sleeve, the coquettish request for a handsome young man to light their cigarette, because ‘pretty girls should not light their own’ and the self-conscious check with the lady in the front row, ‘that her applied lippy looks good’. The 80 something lady looks beautifully presented.

Woven through this story is the myth of Hades and Persephone; a myth of love and abduction in the Greek mythology where the beauteous Persephone is whisked away to the underworld by Hades. This myth is associated with the coming of Spring and Winter: when Persephone comes to the Earth, it’s springtime. When she descends to Hades, it is winter. For Maureen it is a richer story, mined for deeper meaning and opportunities to weave in more friends and their stories. It is also used to underline the wisdom, kindness, exuberance and vibrancy of older and different women in a world that does not always celebrate difference.

I vacillated between chuckling and trying to manage the lump in my throat, such is the power of Hawkins as a potent story-teller. Overwhelmingly, Hawkins as themselves, created a powerful sense of gentle respect. While Maureen is the ‘take no prisoners’ doyenne who plants fabulous jokes like, ‘I told Mum that I had made friends with a homosexual. She was fine about it. She thought it was a vacuum cleaner,’ to poignant advice about meeting elderly women. ‘When you encounter us in the wild-engage!’

This is an imaginative, sensitive, witty piece of beautifully polished theatre. Moreover, it is easy to fall in love with Maureen and everything and everybody who she encapsulates. I cannot wait to see more of Hawkins’ work. They are insightful, without preaching, wise without imposing and incredibly skilled as a believable, relatable performer. It is once again, evidence that our well-curated Festival is offering world class entertainment. Hurry in to meet Maureen, she is not with us for long.

Jude Hines

Photographer:  Roy VanDerVegt

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