Hotspur by Jeffrey Atherden_ MTC_REVIEW_ March 13, 1994

 THEATRE

By Melbourne Theatre Company

At Playhouse, Melbourne Arts Centre

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around March 13, 1994

This review was published in The Melbourne Times after March 13, 1994

 

Major theatre companies need commercially successful productions to support their enormous overheads. In Hotspur the Melbourne Theatre Company may have one.

 

This is not a play which pushes the boundaries of taste, style, form, politics or content. It is, however, superbly performed, wittily written and extremely enjoyable. Ruth Cracknell portrays with wit and subtlety the abrasive Fiona McPherson's journey from spritely but pernicious sticky-beak to elderly lovelorn victim and back again.

 

Garry McDonald, cast deliciously against type as entrepreneur Freddy Brown, is vivid and obnoxious. Brown is a conniving, manipulative, expensive con man who reeks of Alan Bond. He unashamedly buys up Australia's art, land and its people. In his own words he is "a sleezy bag of shit" whom we would like to see fail, put in gaol or impaled. He makes one's flesh crawl.

 

Brown takes a flat in Fiona's dilapidated, pseudo-English home, Hotspur. He is evidently in abject bankruptcy, facing a well-publicised divorce from his equally dreadful wife, Julie, played with relish by Val Levkowicz.

 

The narrative relies on the conflict between the two arrogant characters of Freddy and Fiona and the evolution of their relationship as Freddy appears to assist Fiona to save her estate from massive real estate development.

 

The characters are more interesting than the plot, which is amusing but thin and, at times, clumsy. Marisia, the Polish viola-player, is played passionately by Celia de Burgh and Dennis Moore as Vern the devious little councillor, is a delightful, cowardly weasel. Emotional moments were fleeting, being dispelled by the light comic style which falls somewhere between melodrama and farse.

 

Tony Tripp's design is a perfect naturalistic replica of the interior of a stately home. It is perhaps too elaborate, with a model of the exterior of the house unnecessarily poised above the stage to depict the exterior of the building.

 

The performances are definitely the highlight of this production and they are enhanced by the brisk direction of Simon Phillips who gives these consummate actors their heads.

Kate Herbert