NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH
NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH, Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir St; 23 July-28 August 2011. Photos: Brett Boardman
Lally Katz has a wild and extravagant talent for writing plays and when she hit upon the idea of writing a role for Robyn Nevin, she was given a further gift. According to Katz, Nevin said “make her tough and funny”. It took Katz a couple of years’ fossicking around her imagination and neighbourhood to come up with a character that might fit the bill and now, she has.
Ana (Nevin) is an 80-year-old, irascible Hungarian refugee-migrant, bent but not broken by the weight of harsh experience that fate has laid on her frail shoulders. She lives across a suburban street from Catherine (Megan Holloway) a ditzy young wannabe actress; and two down from Christina (Heather Mitchell) a nice suburban Aussie whose luxuriant locks hint at chemo, as does her passion for order and control.
Catherine shares with Ken (Charlie Garber) a would-be filmmaker who actually spends most of his time on World of Warcraft. Unknown to Catherine he is in love with her but she’s still hung up on Martin (Ian Meadows), who walked out on her a few years back. Completing the neighbours to be watched is Milova (Kris McQuade), Ana’s would-be friend from her old street, who regularly schleps over on the bus hoping to renew acquaintance and have “vun coffee”. But she is not only Serbian but a peasant and the grand Ana haughtily rebuffs her every overture.
All but Nevin and Holloway take on other roles, as does composer and sound designer Stefan Gregory, who when not playing the onstage piano, also plays a Woollies’ deliveryman and the local chemist. Holloway treads a fine line as the daffy young woman who is also Hardy to Nevin’s Laurel; and she deftly manages the balancing act. As well as other neighbours, there’s also Ana’s dog – a German Shepherd-cross named Bella whose temperament is as dyspeptic as her owner’s – happily she remains a disembodied offstage bark.
These very ordinary, very real characters occupy the very real, very ordinary Mary Street, until Catherine is forcibly befriended by Ana – who also call her “Kitty-Kitty”, whether she likes it or not. It gradually becomes apparent that both Catherine and Ana need and find something profound in the other despite – or perhaps because of – the incongruity of their friendship. And that there are dark places in the past for both also begins to surface as Ana’s life story is wheedled out of her by the ingenuous Catherine.
Director Simon Stone and set designer Dale Ferguson place the action in a blank, dark grey-carpeted void. That the various living spaces, streetscape and even wartime Budapest are vividly conjured up are a tribute to the actors and to the director’s faith in the power of the audience’s imagination and to Katz’s storytelling. A fast whirling revolve transports audience and actors alike to and from the past and present, on walks and into and out of different places. It’s an ingenious bit of human and mechanical choreography, even if rather alarming at times.
Aside from the revolve, Neighbourhood Watch works on an often dizzying number of levels. There is rich, ripe character comedy, much laughter and many gasps of shock and delight. The social analysis of inner-city loneliness is acute, while the portrait of the older women and their status as the invisibly damaged flotsam of history is very moving. Robyn Nevin has taken her gift horse, looks her right in the eye and during the course of two-plus hours when she is rarely off stage, rides the bolshy old nag to a personal and professional triumph. It’s a bravura performance.
In the main role of her several cameos, Kris McQuade is a heart-rending Milova: she says little, craves not much more and gets even less, but she is indomitable. Like an ancient carthorse she plods on, bewildered but unbowed by a brutish life. Heather Mitchell too is splendid, all brisk efficiency and neat tracksuit as the Neighbourhood Watch rep; tremulous and fragile as the cancer-battler. The lads, frankly, are there in support but they are solid as rocks and make for a well-rounded and cohesive company.
There are some lovely twists and turns to the story – which you should avoid learning about beforehand. Altogether Neighbourhood Watch is one of those occasions when you come out of the theatre knowing without doubt that you’ve been royally entertained. There’s laughter and tears and surprises. You’ve witnessed one of Australia’s finest actors operating at the height of her powers; and listened to a storyteller whose humanity and imagination are only in their first flowering. What next – for both?
