By Joanna Murray-Smith, by Melbourne Theatre Company
Southbank Theatre, The
Sumner, Nov 13 to Dec 20, 2014
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars: ***1/2
Full review also in Herald Sun online today, Fri Nov 14. It will be in print on Sun Nov 16, 2014. KH
Bernadette Robinson
Bernadette Robinson is renowned for her versatility
and charisma as a singer but, in Pennsylvania Avenue, she reveals
that she is also a fine character actor.
Robinson
plays Harper Clemence, a woman from Thunderbolt Georgia
who, over 40 years, worked her way up from invisible assistant to Social
Secretary for the East Wing of the White House where she planned entertainment
for First Ladies and Presidents of the USA.
Pennsylvania
Avenue is a solo play with songs, written by Joanna Murray-Smith, deftly
directed by Simon Phillips with impressive musical direction by Ian McDonald
and an accomplished band.
Harper is retiring after her decades of
dedication and, surrounded by portraits of past presidents in the famed Blue
Room, she packs her last box of memories while she reminisces about her life in
the White House.
Murray-Smith’s script layers Harper’s personal
story with her narration about the history of US presidents, her encounters
with some of those powerful men and her recollections about the bevy of celebrated
women who sang for them.
Robinson
brings a vulnerability and charm to Harper, balancing her playful wit and bold,
Southern demeanour with her melancholia and her secret shame about her past.
Murray-Smith’s witty dialogue gets plenty of
laughs as do Robinson’s smart comic timing and delivery as she fires off barbed
comments about those in the White House.
But
it is Robinson’s consummate singing and audacious vocal impressions
of divas that illuminate this production; she lights up the stage when she
sings.
Snatches
of songs are cleverly interpolated amongst the dialogue but, when Robinson
sings entire tunes, she brings the house down.
She
does a breathy Marilyn singing Happy Birthday to Kennedy, an hilarious version
of Barbra Streisand’s warped vowels and nasal quality in People, she conjures
Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan then channels the idiosyncratic Eartha Kitt
singing If You Go Away.
Cry
Me A River is taut, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face is poignant and Stand
By Your Man is funny when sung about Hillary Clinton standing by Bill after his
infamous infidelity.
However,
the thrilling moment is when Robinson celebrates Harper’s 50th
birthday by belting out Aretha Franklin’s Respect, a rendition that brings the
crowd to its feet at the curtain call.
The problem with this play is that there is too
much expository dialogue explaining the history of presidents and the minutiae
of the East Wing and its personnel.
This factual material is not balanced well
with Harper’s own story, so the whole feels not quite cohesive and lacks some
dramatic tension until later scenes when Harper’s story becomes more emotional.
Because the action is restricted to one room,
the staging feels static when Harper can do little more than move from chair to
chair or take things in and out of her packing box.
The assured band is upstage behind a curtain but
it would be an asset to have them more visible on stage so that Robinson could
interact more effectively with them.
However, Robinson makes this a night worth
seeing.
By Kate Herbert
No comments:
Post a Comment