LOVE, LOSS & WHAT I WORE
Love, Loss & What I Wore; Playhouse at the Sydney Opera House, January 3-30; photography: the company and Magda Szubanski, by James Morgan.
CHICK SHOWS range from the full blown extravaganza of Mamma Mia! to the minimal, staged reading style of Love Letters with Vagina Monologues and Menopause the Musical somewhere in between. What they all have in common is romance, honesty, heart, laughter and sadness; and the uncanny ability to draw sneers and jeers from those who hate them.
Love, Loss & What I Wore is both a chick show and a staged reading and shares all the above qualities and apparent shortcomings, plus a few of both, of its own. Based on the book by Ilene Beckerman, the stage version was written by Nora and Delia Ephron, the uber gals of Hollywood screen-writing and just plain old book writing success. (Think Heartburn, Sleepless in Seattle, Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally, Julie and Julia, You’ve Got Mail, Frannie In Pieces, How To Eat Like A Child and so on.)
This show is the sisters’ latest collaboration, and possibly the most surprisingly successful in that it was first staged off-Broadway in late 2009 and is still running, with companies of actresses on four-weekly turn-arounds booking until April this year at least; it’s also at the Marigny theatre in Paris, where it’s known, rather dramatically and Froggily, as L’Amour, La Mort, Les Fringues and is booking through to March – and now in Sydney where the original season has been extended already and apparently is likely to extend again. Why?
Well, first of all, it is a chick show and the format – five women discussing the matters light hearted, deep and meaningful, funny and excruciating, that most exercise women’s minds (mothers, clothes, handbags, love, loss, mirrors in changing rooms, Madonna, breasts, boots, bras, death) – is not unlike an extended lunch, coffee, bar or beach gathering of friends. It has the same intimacy, ribaldry, honesty and humour that comes of women getting together and – pardon me – chewing the fat. So word of mouth, that precious commodity that is as valuable and tantalizing to producers as the sparkle dust from Tinkerbell’s wand, is bound to start rumbling from the first preview.
Then you have the casting of five actresses who each bring their own interest, baggage, audience and unique qualities to the show. In Sydney it’s Natalie Bassingthwaighte whose name I’d bet most fans can’t spell correctly but who is not just a gorgeous thing with a hit reality TV show in her CV, but proves herself to be an actress of depth and intelligence; she’s flanked by the experience and charm of Judi Farr who can generate tears or laughter with one slightly raised eyebrow; and the brash and breezy Amanda Muggleton whose tart with a heart persona is at the other end of the spectrum from the runaway star of the show, Magda Szubanski an actress whose famous comedy skills and fearless TV characters have tended to overshadow a performer of rare subtlety and grace. And last but absolutely not least, yet another recent WAAPA alumna, Mirrah Foulkes who not only holds her own in this company, but shines. Much of the credit for bringing to life the stories and the action of this essentially static format goes to director Wayne Harrison. He doesn’t try to inject colour and movement where it isn’t and where it would detract from the inner action of drama and comedy.
The American ancestry of the show doesn’t always sit entirely comfortably in the Australian context; some falls a little flat and there are dips and lows that could have done with being tweaked and snipped; Magda Szubanski apparently wrote or rewrote some of her material and it’s not just her performance that makes it the best of the night. There are some truly delightful moments, one sequence on a currently hot civil topic that will surprise and warm the cockles of the hardest and most reactionary heart; and also many insights on what it is to be female that will have loads of women tearing home to review their handbags, wardrobes and relationships with one another and their nearest and dearest.
