Written by Patrick White
MTC, at Playhouse until
June, 1996
NB: This is not a full review. Notes only remain from
my review (around May 7, 1996)
A Cheery Soul, by Patrick White, is dark comedy but there are moments of hilarity when the actors were waiting for laughs to die to get lines through. But it has a
ghastliness fatalism, an intense and dreadful poetry which makes it painful and
excruciating.
Neil Armfield's production is in the best Brechtian heritage
acknowledging the audience who are complicit in the whole plot, revealing the
lighting, the musicians, the staging and furniture removals. Even the rolling
walkway is a feature recognised and stumbled over on purpose.
Robin Nevin brings a palpable enjoyment to the role of Miss
Docker. She grins wickedly, almost a female Steptoe. Her maddening criticisms,
her grotesque insidious interference, kindly advice are made poignant by her
utter desolation when she feels God has judged her.
Strangely she is only touched or affected by creatures: the
swaggie and astray blue heeler who pees on her old nylons. She drives people to distraction so that
their own Christian charity is taxed to the very limit to the point where the vicar
dies from trying to teach the error of her "militant virtue" from the
pulpit.
Melita Jurisic is luminous as the vicar's wife and Ian Scott
is sympathetic as the inarticulate parson.
___
Director- Neil Armfield
Margaret Mills
Robyn Nevin
Melita Jurisic
Ian Scott
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