The Weekend

Three old but very different friends, now in their seventies, arrive to clean up the beach house of a fourth deceased friend who’d been the thread keeping them together.

Sue Smith’s artful stage adaptation of Charlotte Wood’s popular novel about their secrets, regrets and potential, as these women peel back their friendship and look squarely at life and death, is anchored in three remarkable performances.

Toni Scanlan’s commanding Jude, a former restaurateur, has an impatient bluster and caustic wit so obviously hiding a truth, but only shared through tears at the end.  Belinda Giblin, always a generous actor, is perfect as Adele, a vivacious actress but now without the roles and even a home.  And Melita Jurisic is beautiful as the academic and writer Wendy, if a touch dotty and still mourning her late husband, but a mouthpiece of the wisdom of this book turned drama.  

To Jude’s horror, Wendy arrives with her demented and incontinent dog, Finn, who as a memorising puppet in the hands of Keila Terencio looks on all this with an other-worldly wisdom.  Death is never far away – but then so is the meaning of loyalty and friendship.

And Roman Delo is apt in a number of roles, notably as the arrogant but needy young theatre director, a visitor who plays with Adele’s employment hopes and shows us, by contrast, that becoming a mature fully rounded person can take a lifetime.

Veteran designer Stephen Curtis eschews naturalism with his circular wooden deck surrounded by a changing panorama of nature’s blessings, evocatively lit by Damien Cooper and especially so when the storm arrives.   Ella Butler’s costumes nicely capture character and Steve Francis mixes his own soundscape with choice retro songs from younger lives.  

Director Sarah Goodes has a confident sensitive hold of the play’s movement, the truths of these women, and their wit.  The Weekend does start a little under projected and sometimes Smith’s adaptation is awkwardly bookish with its devices to make real a character turning to short monologues to render good parts from the book. Luckily, the words are rich and worth listening to.  And the play speaks so universally, not just to older women, to “crones” as Adele dubs them, but to all us speeding through whatever this journey of life is all about.

Martin Portus

Photographer: Brett Boardman