Sauce

Mella (Ashleigh Butler), a compulsive liar, and Maura (Claire Imlach), a kleptomaniac, have a series of interwoven adventures in this absurdist, sometimes satirical show. Mella’s on the brink of homelessness due to the machinations of a cruel uncle; Maura’s traumatised by finding her husband bonking another woman beside her in the marital bed!  And she has body image issues, anyway… Neither woman has any friends or support.

Clearly, this is not a naturalistic play even if there is a great deal of recognisable – if wildly and deliberately exaggerated – psychology underlying the women’s actions as they flail against the unexpected. Playwright Ciara Elizabeth Smythe pushes her characters’ predicaments to extreme, nightmare levels that are nevertheless predicaments per se that could happen.  Husbands cheat on wives; heartless relatives cheat on wills. In response, fighting for sanity and survival, Maura and Mella are constantly dazed and confused, frightened, impulsive, ruthless, wary, and above all, alone.

Their peregrinations take them across a city (which sounds here a bit like Melbourne’s Richmond and other villages) where they encounter a variety of obstacles and antagonists – all of them played by Butler and Imlach – the cheating husband, the evil uncle, a fat shame therapist, a creepy priest, and so on – over a dozen characters in all.  What will unite Mella and Maura in the end is sauce and what you can put it on. 

Director Christopher Samuel Carrell chose this Irish one-act, one hour play – here adapted for an Australian urban setting - as a showcase for Butler’s and Imlach’s comedic talents. One wonders, however, whether something, some essential quality, has been lost in the adaptation. Maybe it’s as simple as the Irish accent. (The press release mentions Derry Girls.) The playwright’s intentions are clear throughout, but somehow what’s happening isn’t as funny as it might be. These undoubtedly talented performers at times seem to be going through the motions. Imlach’s transformations are clear – and get laughs – but they could be clearer. Butler’s Mella, the smarter, more devious of the pair, can seem almost bland. Given Christopher Samuel Carrell’s previous shows, say the sharp, black, and ingenious I Have No Enemies, his choice and direction of an adapted Sauce feels like something of a misfire.

Michael Brindley

Photo credit Michelle Higgs-Novel Photographic