Wife

Samuel Adamson’s Wife is an artful, intriguing voyage through generations of gay and straight relationships, with a focus on controlling partners. It’s inspired by Ibsen’s heroine Nora as she finally slams the door on her husband and leaves A Doll’s House.

Indeed, the characters in each of Wife’s four acts, from 1959 through to 2042, have just left a production of that feminist classic.  Wife expands on Ibsen’s compelling theme: whatever our gender, sexuality or times, how do we find true personal liberation within inevitably restricting relationships and conformist worlds?  With difficulty, it seems.

David Marshall-Martin’s central cute doll’s house opens wide to reveal, firstly, backstage in 1959, actress Suzannah (Julia Vosnakis) who discard’s Nora’s costume and bullies and cajoles the star-struck Daisy (Imogen Trevillan) into having an affair, as the ingenue’s rude husband (Will Manton) waits outside. 

Manton reappears next in a local pub circa 1988 as an obscenely irrepressible gay man pressurising his young boyfriend Eric (Henry Lopez Lopez) to come out; until both are thrown out by a bigoted barman. 

In 2019 older Eric (Pete Walters) is now married - to a flamboyant male actor who’s just played Nora – but is reawakened to his early riskier days of gay activism by a visit from Daisy’s daughter Clare (Trevillian). She’s a sexual health doctor and cracking the whip over her daft fiancée (Manton).  With Alison Brooker, most actors play multiple roles; with Trevillian and Manton especially accomplished at distinctive characterisations.

Adamson’s challenge to this cast is to bring truth to an overwritten yet very witty script, with lots of comic, even arch, non-sequiturs jostling with the need to reveal sincere intimacies appropriate to each relationship. It’s a lot for director Darren Redgate to handle; and not for the first time at the New, his cast is often awkward moving in the space, and nuances and ideas are are under-projected. 

Aibhlinn Stokes and Burley Stokes do a fine job with period costuming.  Wife had a successful production in London where Adamson, raised in Adelaide, now lives and where Wife is set.  He’s sharp-eyed about class, in both straight and queer worlds, and with his sweep through British generations, Wife shares qualities of the gay novelist Alan Hollinghurst – with a touch of Ibsen.

Martin Portus

Photographer: © Bob Seary