Ron and Isobel

On the way to the tram stop after the opening night of Ron and Isobel, we were stopped at traffic lights and joined by a couple of fellow audience members.  They were still smiling, and the woman said to us, ‘Wasn’t it good?’  They were La Mama first timers; they’d picked this show as a bit of an experiment, they’d had a great time and they’d be going back to La Mama for more.  And why not?  Although we did say – tentatively - that Ron and Isobel is not exactly your usual La Mama show… 

It is an amiable, rather old-fashioned play set precisely on an evening four days after The Dismissal in 1975 – and almost feels as if it were written then.  There are two couples – one, lower-middle-class Labor stalwarts – with a gay son – and the other whom we would today call ‘aspirational’ – with politics to match.   

Salt-of-the-earth Ron (Justin Harris-Parslow) is a builder and his sharp-tongued wife Isobel (Kelly Nash) has a little business as an office phone cleaner.  Their son Jack (Taylor Smith-Morvell), starting a modelling career with the nom de mode ‘Jay’, chooses tonight to come out to Mum.  She’s already fractious because it’s her wedding anniversary and Ron took her to the circus.  The circus!  Ron, a gregarious, well-meaning (well-meaning!) fellow and wanting to avoid more argument, invites their new neighbours, Sandra (Nadia Andary), a would-be frock designer, and Paul (Shannon Woollard), an estate agent, over for supper and a drink.  Sandra and Paul, but particularly Paul, are pleased as Punch that Whitlam’s got the boot…

One could say that perhaps director Bruce Langdon might have reigned in some of his cast and urged others to a little more expression and vitality.  Ms Nash demonstrates years of experience: she knows exactly when to throw a line away, when to drop a pause in before a punchline and when a grimace can be very eloquent, but in the intimacy of the La Mama Courthouse, she is a little big – just as Mr Harris-Parslow’s Ron is a little loud – and just as Mr Woollard and Ms Andary are, well, a little quiet.  Mr Smith-Morvell, meanwhile, might realise that being gay need not involve being quite so arch and knowing: his Jack’s relationship with Isobel – and with his Dad Ron – has no tension, uncertainty or light and shade at all.

It is, as it were, Don’s Party meets Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf – but without the aspirations of either.  Political differences are a pretext for some insults and jokes, and character revelations are to do with some not too serious marital difficulties.  Jack’s being gay is swiftly accepted and overcome.  (In 1975?)  We discover that garrulous loud mouth Ron is a lot smarter and bigger hearted than we might have thought and that male – and female – bonding can overcome all kinds of differences. 

Our couple at the traffic lights recognised these characters – who are broad but believable types, drawn from life - in this unpretentious if rather obvious piece that is warm hearted, goes for laughs and gets them.

Michael Brindley