Written and performed by Dennis Coard
At La Mama Theatre from 4 to 13 March 2022
NB: This review of performance on April 4 to 14, 2002
Reviewer:
Kate Herbert
 |
| R: Dennis Coard |
People's
personal histories are endlessly fascinating. Dennis Coard has written his
life into a charming and cheeky one hour, one-man show.
Coard's
play, The Fall of the Roman Umpire, is a self-narrated journey from his
emigration from Ireland to Australia with his family as a child.
The theatre
space is demystified at the beginning. He arrives, tumbling down the stairs at
La Mama, to turn the stage lights on himself, apologising for being a one-man
show.
He plays
himself as a pubescent Irish child, pants rolled up to his knees. "Sorry
about the legs," he quips. "They run in the family."
. Coard is
a consummate comic performer. His characters are delightful and believable and
his Irish accent is, of course, flawless.
The family
comprises his Da, Joe, his Ma, Thelma, Grandpa and three
brothers
Joe is an
unreliable, naughty Irishman who treats his children as a captive audience for
his jokes and antics. He taught them slapstick at an early age, which explains
Coard's own comic skill.
Coard
portrays his engaging father pretending to be a fictitious aunty who entertains
the boys with hilariously silly magic tricks.
While
father believed in light entertainment to control the boys, mother was less
forgiving and more authoritarian.
The
transitions between mother, father aunty and grandfather are smooth, making the
characters all the more compelling.
The latter
part of the show is about the family's time in Adelaide. One very slick and
funny scene is performed in mime.
It is a whip
through twenty years of Coard's life during which he worked for Telecom, drank
too much, had a couple of children and married and divorced twice.
His
decision to audition for acting school in Melbourne at the age of 35 was a
success. He shows us his audition pieces: an edited Macbeth speech and a
poignant monologue by an old digger.
Coard's
audition served him well. After his studies at the Victorian College of the
Arts, he became a regular on Home and Away. There is life after Telecom - and
Ireland.
By Kate
Herbert
Image by Adrian Prosen
Photo of Boy: By Joseph Coard (circa 1956)
Photo of Man: By Rudi Jass (circa 2020)
Painting of “Fairsky”: unknown(circa 1960)
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