Reviews

In the yard of a shack in Wyoming, in 2017, a year into the Trump presidency, four friends sit and talk.  The shack itself (design by Louise McCarthy) features a pattern to its peeling paint and one curtained window: it’s the Stars and Stripes.  When the light beams from within, the Cross is outlined on the door. 

Occasionally, theatre leaves me breathless and awestruck, and this Sydney Theatre Company production, adapted and directed by Kip Williams from one of Oscar Wilde’s best known 1891 works, is one such example. Quite simply, 37 year old Eryn Jean Norvill has been given the role of a lifetime and has delivered the performance of a lifetime.

You walk into the theatre for this show, and the main set, half lit, waiting, redolent with possibility, immediately reminds you of Edward Hopper’s ‘Night Hawks’.  Or it did me.  It’s not a copy.

Chase is a character that is close to Carly Sheppard’s heart and could even be seen as a kind of alter ego; the uninhibited part of ourselves that makes us confront the more troubling aspects of our existence. Chase is an eclectic collection of contemporary social identities ranging from the bogan to the superficial social media influencer. The ease with which Sheppard transitions between these various personas elicits a sense of madness or schizophrenia. The performance is undoubtedly chaotic in a carnivalesque and subversive manner.