TURNS
TURNS, Everest Theatre – Seymour Centre to February 22, Glen St Theatre March 15-26; then touring nationally until August 2011.
REG LIVERMORE AND NANCYE HAYES are pretty much Australian theatrical royalty. Both have pedigrees as long as your arm and, for their very different histories and talents, are revered by the industry and audiences. What a good idea then, to put them together on a stage in a “twisted pantomime” that lets each performer do the “turns” for which the historic entertainments of vaudeville, variety and pantomime were famed and popular.
The show – devised and written by Livermore and directed by Tom Healey is a curious and unsettling piece. It opens, against a painted canvas backdrop advertising efficacious remedies such as nerve tonics, constipation and indigestion remedies and so on, with Miss Marjory Joy (Hayes) teetering through some comically threadbare music hall routines. She was once famous, you see, and she is reminiscing and reliving her glory days. Although it quickly becomes clear that the glory was probably always in her own mind, or at most, in very third-rate venues; Miss Marjory Joy was never a threat to Wilson, Keppel and Betty.
But before you can say “I say, I say, I say”, the tone and direction change as the twisted aspect kicks in and, for the audience, the penny begins to drop. Miss Marjory was never famous, it turns out; she is a third-rate no-hoper. It was her mother, Marjory Montcrieffe, who was the talent and in whose remembered slipstream the now aged and demented daughter trails. Witness to her batty delusions is her son Alistair (Livermore) who is – not surprisingly – depressed with his life and deeply resentful of his mother and her fantasies.
The essence of those early styles of entertainment, however, was always the basic optimism, harmless silliness and a kind of sweetness that lay at the heart of the routines and the stars. Pratfalls, puns, malaprops and creaky punch lines were the lifeblood of variety theatre of the late 19th and early 20th century. The worse the joke, the bigger the laughs and the more fun there was to be had in the groans that went with it, as Roy Rene’s alter ego Mo McCackie knew very well; he could turn the air blue but his schtick was not misanthropic. Similarly, the other great Australian star of the time, Florrie Forde whose comedy songs and bathetic ballads could rouse WW1 audiences to join in the choruses, laugh and wipe away tears: there was not a mean beat in the heart beneath her well-upholstered bosom.
And that’s where Turns is so disconcerting. Nancye Hayes is one of the best and most experienced singer-hoofer-actresses of hers and any other generation. It’s odd to watch her – very expertly – being very bad. It’s actually really difficult for a fabulous performer to be bad; think of Jo Stafford and Paul Weston doing their excruciating turn as Jonathan and Darlene Edwards – all bum notes and mistimed cues and genius. It was so brilliantly bad the album won the Grammy for best comedy disc of the year. Unfortunately, Hayes doesn’t get that chance because the material isn’t good enough; or bad enough, whichever way you want to look at it.
In other words, as this twisted pantomime progresses, and as the character of the put-upon Alistair takes over for the second half, the twisted becomes bitter, and downright bleak at times. Turns starts out with an idea that could have been brilliant, but gets lost along the way in something very like the sourest misanthropy this side of an unripe lemon. What happens, what doesn’t, and what turns out to be make believe and lost dreams becomes as confused and confusing as Miss Marjory’s state of mind. Alistair is pretty confused too, although he at least sees a light at the end of the tunnel through “Joanna”. And if you want to know who she is, go and see the show, I won’t spoil it for you.
