Friday March 29, 2024
Love's Triumph
Review

Love's Triumph

April 6 2007

In Terence Crawford's joyous borrowing from Shakespeare he's not so much having a lend as celebrating the possibilities of iambic pentameter in the mouths of a mob of characters from the Cross.

Love's Triumph is a long odds nag running in the third at Randwick. If it doesn't trip over its own hoofs it will save the bacon of hopeless mug punter Morrie Fairway. He's in deep to the tune of 50 big ones to brothel-keeper, standover merchant and all-round good time girl Edwina Brumble (Garry Scale).

Add to these Alberto Rossini (Andrew James) a cop so bent he doesn't know whether he's coming or going; twins separated at birth, a pair of rude mechanicals - well rude mechanics, actually - chancing their arms in the big smoke; a tart with a heart and a visiting Jim Bakker-style evangelist - Hoover J. Idiott - who fortuitously discovers his inner feminine side, and the possibilities for comic mayhem are as endless as they were four centuries ago.

Crawford's script rarely falters and neither does the cast. The production - Sydney's second after a sell-out first outing in 2003 - is a winning combination of high-grade cast, high production values and total conviction from all involved. James Browne’s set and costume design is worthy of the top end of town rather than a co-op company in which love of theatre triumphs nightly over lack of dollars.

Particular mention has to be made of Edwina Brumble’s extravagant gowns and millinery ("costume construction Kate Shanahan"). Each succeeding outfit is as spectacular as Eddie's eyelashes - which in themselves are long enough and flashed about enough to be classified as lethal weapons. Garry Scale shamelessly and hilariously makes the most of his accoutrements and also delivers an exquisitely skilled comic performance.

Love's Triumph

Mark Owen Taylor is unnervingly convincing as the cross-dressing Yankee bible basher, Pearl Tan makes a delicious tart: Angelique Won Fon; Damion Hunter is a sweetly rude but very polite mechanical, Darcy Archibald and brother of Brad Archibald (Robert Woodhead). Brad is also the long-lost twin of Chastity (Megan Drury) which explains why he looks as much like his brother as the Governator looks like Danny de Vito. Drury also pops up as the Rev. Idiott’s good lady wife Baby Idiott, which characterisation conclusively proves her skill as an actor.

And if you're still with me and have some inkling of what this may be about, you will most definitely enjoy the evening. More than anything, Love's Triumph is an enchanting, silly and very clever evocation of a vanished Australia and vanishing vernacular played to the hilt by a top cast in a fine production. I wouldn't miss it for quids.

Love's Triumph, Darlinghurst Theatre, Potts Point; to 21 April 2007; ph: (02) 8356 9987 or www.darlinghursttheatre. (March 29, 2007.)

 

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