Last One Standing
Retired builder Joe (Ned Manning) lives defiantly in his precious seaside home which is as old and decrepit as he is and hemmed in by newly-developed apartment blocks. He displays all the irrational anxieties and obsessions of aged loneliness: desperate to fix a wonky table leg, for instance, even though the house is disintegrating about his ears.
Suspicious of all around him, particularly - and with reason, as it quickly transpires - his adult children (Glenn Hazeldine and Eve Morey), he finds solace in the past and in the ghostly presence of his dead wife (Tracy Mann). She, incongruously but sweetly, seems more alive and definitely warmer than her tiresomely materialistic brats.
Written by Manning (who also co-produces this independent production) Last One Standing is his response to what he sees as the betrayal of old Australian values in favour of the grab-it style of today. It’s classic David Williamson territory: a family feud across generations and ethical and social frontiers as blood ties are broken by the prospect of (very) big money.
Son Bill juggles mobile, laptop and the swift slippery slope from caring son to venal property developer, while his high-achieving architect sister flies in from her near-partnership status in a US practice and just as quickly jettisons her ideals in favour of suddenly presented ambitions. Peripherally - as ghosts must needs be peripheral to the living - their mother, Ruth, floats about between her one-time idealistic hippie state and the present sad relic of times out of joint.
While there is no doubting Manning's passion and commitment, there is at present at least, a chasm between intention and reality. The play (a compact single act 80-odd minutes) is flawed, particularly in its opening 20 minutes which drag unmercifully. Life is breathed into the characters in tantalising moments when each seems to get the measure of why they're there and who they are.
This is particularly true of interactions between Manning and Mann and there's some tender work from Morey in the latter half of the play. Hazeldine, on the other hand, seems content to stay out of it and probably could have used his mobile phone to greater effect in delivering a performance. It might settle down as the actors settle into a rhythm and get a grip on the pace for the comic and satirical moments which, on opening night, were more leaden than laugh-provoking.
Another factor which does not help the production is that there is little sense of a directorial vision. If Jessica Symes knows what she was aiming at with this static, unfocused staging, she is keeping it to herself - and doesn't appear to have brought the actors in on the secret either. It makes for a puzzling evening of so near, yet so far.
Last One Standing, Old Fitzroy Theatre, Woolloomooloo to May 5, 2007; ph: (02) 9294 4296 or www.oldfitzroy.com.au
