By The Shift Theatre with
Theatreworks
Theatreworks, April 25 to May 13, 2012
Reviewer: Kate
Herbert on April 25, 2012
Stars: ***
Olivia Connolly, Helen Hopkins, Carolyn
Bock in The Girls in Grey
THE GIRLS IN GREY IS A THEATRICAL TRIBUTE to the nurses who tended our Anzacs during World War One
and, fittingly, it opened on a cold, rainy Anzac Day.
Writers, Carolyn
Bock and Helen Hopkins, both capable, compelling actors, developed this script
from research and the diary accounts of women who served during World War One
in Egypt, The Dardanelles and The Somme.
Although these
courageous women did not carry weapons, they worked in hospital units near the
Front and suffered the horrific psychological trauma and physical illnesses typical
in war zones.
The script uses dramatised
self-narration, poetic imagery and commentary to illuminate the experiences of three
nurses (Bock, Hopkins, Olivia Connolly).
The episodic,
non-naturalistic and didactic style of the play is commonly used in community
and political theatre and draws on Brechtian principles of theatre, allowing us
to step back from the emotional stories and personal anguish of characters and
observe their experiences dispassionately.
This style echoes
the nurses’ sharply defined role that requires them to remain cool under
enormous pressure and to respect the boundaries that separate nurses’ duties
from those of doctors.
This is not to say
that the women’s experiences are not moving as the nurses face the horrors of
mutilated and dying men, the filth of the frontline trenches, the onset of
Spanish Flu and the loss of their husbands, fiancés and brothers, all played
effectively by Lee Mason.
The three women’s voices
blend like a Greek Chorus in this engaging ensemble, and they give life to
their individual characters: Bock as elegant, proud Matron Grace, Hopkins as
sensitive, diligent Alice, and Connolly as cheeky, younger Elsie.
The first half is a
little repetitive in its dialogue, pace and rhythm but the latter half finds
some dynamic variation when the nurses reach The Somme and tragedy escalates.
Karen Martin’s
direction is often static, confining the women to the foreground, wooden
platform and wasting the dramatic upstage space between two ragged, grubby,
canvas drops that remind us of army tents (Alexander Hiller).
The Girls in Grey is
an educational and sometimes confronting retelling of those forgotten women of
World War One.
By Kate Herbert
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