Sweet Road

The Pymble Players are journeying down the road on their way to the Zenith Theatre in Chatswood in 2025 and hopefully that will be a successful trip for the group.  The characters in Sweet Road however have somewhat challenging journeys that traverse city streets, unsealed country roads and a rollercoaster of uncomfortable emotions.

The set design consists of two fixed panels which not only cover cast entrances and exits but also provide screens for a variety of projections.  The front seats of cars come and go as needed.  Indeed, almost the entire play is performed in and around cars as the journeys of the characters get derailed and the individual stories start to intertwine.

Tonia Davis gets us started as Jo, a childless career woman who has been busily planning her husband’s birthday party.  She seems happy enough, until she witnesses him being affectionate with another woman and suddenly realises the extent of his unfaithfulness.  Completely ambushed by this discovery she decides to just keep driving, hoping that the road will somehow answer her many questions and provide her with a new sense of direction.  Chloe Callow then enters as Carla and she goes on to spend an inordinate amount of time in this play talking to two invisible children and an invisible dog.  She is overworked and endlessly patient with her frustrating husband who seems to make one bad decision after the other.  Davis is calm and accepting of her fate as Jo whereas Callow has to constantly and energetically dodge the bullets and uncertainty provided by her childish partner.  Both women have been very well cast in their respective roles.

Andy, the well intentioned but unreliable husband of Carla, is fidgety and a little unhinged like a child at a birthday party who has ingested far too much sugar and food colouring.  This complex and sometimes explosive character is brought to life by Dimitri Armatas and his energy doesn’t let up from start to finish. Jordan Andrews wears a variety of hats that include a policeman, a mechanic and a receptionist.  His most memorable cameo however is as a very unsettling hitchhiker who Andy decides to give a lift to.  Enough said.

The most tragic character though is Michael, a broken man with a devastating backstory who is beautifully portrayed by Nick Roberts.  Roberts is an actor who really knows how to command the stage.  He did it in Gaslight late last year and he does it effortlessly again here.  You can hear a pin drop when this man delivers a monologue as he has the audience in the palm of his hand.  Michael is a lost soul, constantly driving across the country as a means to escape his past but it is always breathing down his neck, try as he might, he can’t leave it behind anywhere. 

Ome Wu makes the most of her small but touching role as Yasmin, a young woman who thinks she has found ‘the one’.  Sadly for her, Act 2 doesn’t pan out quite the way the lovestruck youngster had hoped but that’s a life lesson that a lot of us learn the hard way.

Rounding out the cast is Murray Fane as Frank, a suddenly widowed retiree who is somewhat adrift without his lifelong partner.  It was strange to see Fane in this smaller, supporting role because he usually plays parts that are in the centre of everything, requiring him to deliver the lion’s share of the dialogue.  I wonder if he is enjoying this piece a little more without the weight of the performance on his shoulders as much as usual.

There is a plethora of sound and lighting effects to help set the various scenes as the journeys go in their sometimes miscellaneous directions.  The most powerful of these is perhaps the oncoming headlights in the eyes of Nick Roberts as he drives through the seemingly endless night.  So simple and yet so powerful in its effectiveness.  Likewise, the effect that human touch has on Roberts’ Michael after months of his character feeling so terribly alone.  Indeed, the real magic of this play is when the stories of these characters start to overlap and they find themselves at cross-roads where they may or may not get back on their original track.

Sweet Road plays for two more weekends at the cnr of Mona Vale Rd and Bromley Avenue, Pymble.  Book now to avoid disappointment. https://pymbleplayers.com.au/tickets

9 high beams to the eyes out of 10.

Fiona Kelly