The Shoe-Horn Sonata

A full length play with only two actors and little movement is an extremely difficult production to sustain. However, actors Kirsty Veron (Sheila) and Jacqui Stephens (Bridie) prove more than capable of keeping the audience’s attention. 

The Shoe-Horn Sonata is about two former nurses who were captured by the Japanese after the fall of Singapore in 1942 and imprisoned in Sumatra. Though personally close during their confinement, they have since grown apart and only come together again many years later for a television documentary.

Though Veron and Stephens never experienced what the nurses went through, their acting is straight from the Method School of acting, in that they have immersed themselves so much into the characters that they are entirely believable as former prisoners of war.

The horrific happenings that are revealed by the actors are true, and are based on wide research by the playwright, John Misto.

The production is enhanced by grainy black and white photographs projected on to the rear of the stage. These photographs depict old Singapore, half-starved prisoners of war, Australian Prime Minster John Curtin and a montage of World War Two war leaders.

Peter Whalley-Thompson provides the polished, crisp, offstage voice for the television interviews and does a far better job than some of today’s television talking heads.

The play felt a little long in act one, but in act two the personal conflict between Sheila and Bridie that surfaces in a number of hotel room scenes, enhances the play. 

The production is intelligent theatre and smoothly directed by veteran director Anne Wilson.

Ken Cotterill 

Photo: Kirsty Veron (l) as Sheila and Jacqui Stephens as Bridie.