Only An Orphan Girl

Thank goodness for community theatre and all that it offers: membership, stage and backstage experience, camaraderie, upskilling, belonging.  There is great value in the relationships that exist between community, theatre, and identity, and our world can always do with more of it.  Plus the Tea Tree Players have been in the game since 1976 as well as in possession of a delightful and welcoming theatre space; they are truly a gem of an institution.

The April 2023 production is Henning Nelms’ Only and Orphan Girl (1944), directed by Barry Hill. This work sits perfectly in the intimate Surrey Downs theatre, giving the audience a great sense of connection to the action and permission to indulge in the pure fun of this melodrama, including, but not limited to hissing, booing, and cheering as much as possible.  Each scene is interspersed with perfectly imagined Victorian music hall-style entertainment introduced by our MC, a suitably loquacious and verbose Tim Cousins.  The audience is invited to sing along to some favourites like “Roll Out The Barrel”, or later, “My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean”, with some hilarious instructions about sitting or standing each time a ‘B word’ is sung - an entertaining device to energize your audience. Elsewhere, with appropriate (therefore hilarious) gravitas, we are entertained by the likes of ‘famous touring dancers’ Olga Riopacorsetoff and Tatiana Orlovski (Ashlee Brown and Lachlan Blackwell).  What these two tutu-clad folk can accomplish with a balloon has to be experienced!

But back to the guts of the story. In true melodramatic excess, the complexities of the storyline are absurd and scenes are replete with typical, moustache-twirling evil-doer, innocent heroine with impeccable morals, hick farm folk, and er… a hero named Dick, plus all the conflicts of good and evil, salvation and damnation. Barry Hill has given the cast excellent direction and I particularly appreciated the physical nuances each character displays, including the beautifully executed and entirely necessary ‘asides’ that leave nothing to our imagination. As our unsullied heroine Nellie, Cheyenne Loveday floats and glides through her entrances and exits, swooning gracefully at every opportunity, sometimes accompanied by her own tinkling theme music. 

Now Dick loves Nellie and Nellie secretly loves Dick (a very entertaining Clinton Nitschke), but they are thwarted by circumstance and a conniving villain, Arthur Rutherford. Mike Pole as Rutherford is in fine voice and full of dastardly cunning, and totally deserving of all the vigorous heckling from the audience. Rutherford’s cast-off wife Ethel (Theresa Dolman) also shoulders in on the evil action alongside some salacious advances in Dick’s direction, however, she is redeemed in the end. Speaking of evil, there are a number of scenarios where death is a distinct possibility for several of the characters, but mostly Nellie. Think roped and trapped, the threat of imminently exploding dynamite, the obligatory saw-mill scene, or guns being pointed and flesh wounds inflicted; all of these accompanied, of course, by vociferous reactions from the audience.

Ma Perkins (Heather Riley) and Swem Perkins (Tom Moore) are parents to Dick and adoptive parents to Nellie. Both actors shine in their roles as the simple-but-wholesome country folk being fleeced at several points and also get to deliver a few amusing non sequiturs along the way. Similarly, Mrs Appleby (Cathie Oldfield) and Lucy Appleby (EleanorMae Lawson) are characters who add to the confusion and hilarity and both women give it their all.

The cast deliver mostly fine American rural accents where needed and embrace their characters with serious intention and focus, allowing the humour to rise without needing to labour it, except when the script or director require such ‘milking’.  In just a few places, the pace could be moved along some but the structure worked well with the punning narrator easing us in and out of the ‘troupe’s’ performance of their play and their entertaining transitional musical hall items. 

All the artifice and staples of classic melodrama make an appearance, manipulated precisely by Hill to provoke reaction and attention from the audience. The director has elicited much from his cast to present an utterly escapist and enjoyable theatrical experience.  Bravo all!

Lisa Lanzi