Venue and Dates: Arts Centre Melbourne, Playhouse - 11 August to 15 September 2012
Reviewer: Joe
Calleri
Stars: 2.5
Stars: 2.5
Something just didn’t gel for me with
this production of John Guare’s,
His Girl Friday. At the risk of mixing metaphors,
watching this production is akin to eating a huge degustation meal. The
production looks impressive enough with its
abundant proliferation of nicely costumed, competent actors (headed by Phillip Quast and Pamela Rabe) occupying a nice looking naturalistic stage. But, ultimately one or more key ingredients – including sufficient laughs - are missing. Therefore, the entire meal, or in this case, production, is unsatisfying.
abundant proliferation of nicely costumed, competent actors (headed by Phillip Quast and Pamela Rabe) occupying a nice looking naturalistic stage. But, ultimately one or more key ingredients – including sufficient laughs - are missing. Therefore, the entire meal, or in this case, production, is unsatisfying.
Phillip Quast and Pamela Rabe
His Girl Friday’s plot is
straightforward; on the day of the hanging execution of
notorious murderer Holub, David Woods), a gaggle of card-playing,
world-weary journalists unite at the prison’s media room to report on the
story, complete with gory details. Their room is full of the sound of tap-tapping,
old-fashioned typewriters and the ringing of archaic telephones.
Quast, as the manipulative but loveable
rogue, newspaperman Walter Burns, is not only the production’s stand-out
performer, but also its saviour from being a complete disaster. Burns is
searching for his star reporter, the feisty, divorcee, Hildy Johnson (Rabe) to
report on the execution. But, to Burns’s disgust and dismay, Hildy has other
plans for her life, including marriage. While female writers and reporters are
neither exceptional nor unusual in 2012, the opposite was the case in the late
1930’s, when His Girl Friday is set.
What unfolds over the next two
hours and forty minutes, is essentially a tale of corruption. The Mayor is corrupt,
as is the prison system, and surprise, surprise, so is the press corps, who
will go to any lengths to get their scoop. Sound familiar?
Director Aidan Fennessy’s stodgy, earnest direction of this
production, must take at least some of the blame for its failure to deliver the
goods as a proper, laugh out loud, slapstick comedy.
Frankly, while this production makes
for relatively entertaining Saturday afternoon fare, sadly, nothing renders it
either special or memorable.
By Joe Calleri
No comments:
Post a Comment