Day One, A Hotel, Evening (Black Swan State Theatre Company, State Theatre Centre, June 2013)
The party supply business is rife with corporate espionage.
Stella (Roz Hammond) and Madeleine (Michelle Fornasier) in Day One, A Hotel, Evening.
Photo by Gary Marsh Photography
This is just a taste of the rapid-fire dialogue in Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith’s Day One, A Hotel, Evening, Black Swan Theatre Company’s latest show at Northbridge’s Heath Ledger Theatre.
The fast pace is echoed by the swiftness of the set changes – once again, Black Swan shows off its talent for very cool sets, this time with a set of revolving brickwork interiors setting the scene for countless murky liaisons between three married couples.
We have only two responsibilities: to be curious and promiscuous... in a cafe.
Sadly, even these responsibilities might be too much for Murray-Smith’s upper-middle-class malcontents, who can’t even seem to cheat on each other very successfully.
There’s no cure for intuition.
Incredibly fast-paced, like an HBO series crammed into an hour and a half, the show is littered with contemporary references – everything from Berlusconi to Apple, and keeps the audience in fits throughout the bewildering array of adultery it is presented with.
I’m what you’d call aggressive aggressive. It wastes less time, but some people find it a little off-putting.
The play isn’t completely devoid of higher meaning – by the end, clear themes emerge on suburbia and the discontent it can breed, where happiness is not a given, but a decision one must make.
If what you have doesn’t cost anything, what’s it worth?
All of the actors do splendidly in the repartee-heavy script, delivering flurries of razor-sharp one-liners and put-downs with clarity and excellent comic timing.The standout, however, is Roz Hammond of the impressive resume – clearly an actress with staying power.
Her dotty Stella is fabulous and the perfect choice to deliver the play’s wistful stabs in the gut as it draws to a close.
Will it stand the test of time? Possibly it won’t become what you’d call a classic, but if classics were all we ever got, the theatre would die a swift death. We are living here and now and we want good plays, with solid – if whirlwind – plotting and plenty of laughs, and Joanna Murray-Smith is clearly a playwright who can deliver.
Disclosure: I was a guest of Black Swan for this show. But I write without fear or favour.
Hurry: Ends this Sunday, June 30.