Snapshots From Home

Margery Forde’s Snapshots From Home calls for an ensemble cast who can sing. It’s ideal for community theatre and Villanova Players’ production, their second, captured the spirit, the fun, and the heartbreak of those stuck at home during the Second World War.

Originally a Prime of Life Arts Project, Forde culled through over six-hundred pages of oral history from 24 men and women from Queensland to extract a memoir theatre-piece. A mammoth achievement but one that saw her rewarded with a Writers’ Guild Awgie in 1996.

The stage is bare but for eleven chairs for eleven actors, an old-time 40s radio, and a piano. Moments of memory are splashed across the rear wall, and recordings of major events permeate the script: Menzies announcing the war, Darwin being bombed, the Japanese in Sydney Harbour, the dropping of the Atom bomb and Victory in the Pacific day celebrations.

In style it reminded me a little of Joan Littlewood’s Oh! What a Lovely War! not as brutal or confronting, but just as devastating and effective.

The songs embraced the era and gave the play life. ‘Wish Me Luck as You Wave me Goodbye’, ‘Chin Up! Cheerio! Carry On!’ and the number that says 1940s immediately you hear it, ‘Chattanooga Choo-Choo’. Beth Allen, Tainika Kane-Topeka and Josephine Stockdale were an impressive girl-group ala Andrew Sisters with some great harmony on, ‘Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree’, whilst Beth Allen in solo mode brought some pathos to ‘That Lovely Weekend’ and was fun as a local girl who didn’t date the Yanks.

Patrick Eavens was spot-on as an ‘ocker’ Aussie soldier who hated the Yanks taking the Aussie sheilas, whilst Nikolai Stewart was a cocky G.I. who had no trouble landing the chicks and danced a swinging jitterbug.

A Sunday night sing-round-the-piano with ‘Three Little Fishes’, ‘Tipperary’, ‘Pack Up Your Troubles’ and the tongue-twisting ‘Maizy Doats’ was a highlight, as was an episode from Lux Radio Theatre which Liz Morris extravagantly introduced with a ‘Lux’ commercial, giving Lorraine Fox, Milton Scully and Rod Thompson a chance to overact, accompanied by Sound FX and ‘sign-holding’ (Applause/Laugh etc) from Patrick Eavens.

I liked the way ‘I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now’ was used to poignantly reflect the digger’s thoughts about his wife at home. Some moments hit like a punch in the gut; the Irish postmaster asking his customer to pass on a message to a woman in their street, ‘your son’s dead’ and the returned digger with PTS sitting in a tram on his own crying. It’s these moments that gave Snapshots from Home its currency and its emotional gravitas.

Maria Plumb’s direction was unfussy and robust, although some actors needed to project more, especially when their voices were fighting with recorded background noise.

Finally, kudos to pianist Rosemary Murray who played piano and accompanied with style as she did in Villanova’s first production of the piece 20 years ago.

Peter Pinne