JUMPY
JUMPY, a Melbourne Theatre Company and Sydney Theatre Company co-production at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, 29 March-18 May 2015. Photography by Brett Boardman; above: Caroline Brazier, Tariro Mavondo and Jane Turner; right: Brenna Harding and Jane Turner.
Pamela Rabe is as canny in her choice of plays to direct as she is as an actress. Her last production in Sydney was the excellent In The Next Room (or the Vibrator Play) and with Jumpy she seems to be continuing with an emerging theme of exploration of the lives, travails and laughter of women. And also bringing to public attention playwrights whose work is little known here.
English playwright April De Angelis was virtually unknown – in Australia – until this 2012 play from the Royal Court was picked up by MTC and STC and opened recently in Melbourne before travelling north. But she’s been a fixture in the UK for more than 20 years during which time each of her plays has been a commission, that is, not once has she written on spec; and her latest is for the Royal National Theatre. So, within minutes of curtain-up you can see why this one in particular caught the public imagination (a successful West End transfer post-Royal Court).
Canny choices by the director extend to the all-important area of casting (the cliche being that it’s 90% of the director’s job) and with a company of nine you’d have to believe there’s plenty of room for error or disastrous compromise, but no. Starting with the vital central role, Jane Turner is a quietly spectacular pivot around which the play and players revolve. She is Hilary, a feminist, wife and mother who’s just realised that the longed-for light at the end of the tunnel of turning 50 and having a teenage daughter is actually a runaway express train coming the other way. Wine – lots of it – is her running gag and solution.
As the not-quite-16 jailbait daughter Tilly, Brenna Harding is a seething pout away from self-immolation. In her main-stage theatre debut she delivers a sustained and believable performance as a glowering volcano of resentment and entitlement that is instantly, horribly and hilariously recognisable.
At the other end of the family is Mark, Hilary’s husband and Tilly’s father. David Tredinnick tiptoes hopefully through his domestic minefield with all the clueless goodwill of the nice chap who’s out of his depth in a sea of raging femaleness. That Hilary’s bedtime “project” for them is a nightly reading of Great Expectations explains everything that’s wrong with their world.
Trying her darnedest to help fix that world is Hilary’s oldest friend Frances. With not a song in sight, Marina Prior is a revelation as the woman who is not going to let advancing years get in the way of her energetically exercised sex appeal, leotard or burlesque classes. She is the antithesis of her best mate and she and Turner make a fabulous pairing.
Tilly’s under-age sex life brings another family into the mix and also her best friend, the sweetly daffy Lyndsey (STC debutante, the excellent Tariro Mavondo) whose under-age pregnancy gives Hilary waking nightmares. The real nightmare, however, is young Josh (yet another good debut from Laurence Boxhall). His view, through an artfully draped fringe of hair, is so obscured he apparently couldn’t find the condoms.
Hilary’s feminist response is to call a collective meeting of concerned parents. Enter the remarkable Caroline Brazier as Josh’s tiger mother Bea, and her deluded actor husband Roland (John Lloyd Fillingham). As Roland yabbers on about his allegedly incredibly busy career – eliciting snorts of laughter from the real actors in the audience – Hilary earnestly propounds her theory of the right thing to do. Standing over and between them, as if presiding over an inane verbal tennis match, Brazier’s largely silent responses are some of the funniest and cleverest comic acting seen since the last time she graced a Sydney stage.
It’s no spoiler to reveal that Hilary and Mark and Bea and Roland split up and the Ayckbourn-ish satirical comedy of the first half turns darker and more introspective in the second. As Hilary tries to negotiate her challenged personal politics, changed circumstances and the sudden, not entirely welcome, discovery that she’s still got it, she also – in this production at least – has to battle the furniture. Cunningly lit by Matt Scott, Michael Hankin’s set is ostensibly a simple framed blond timber box. Across it however, sliding back and forth, are the trappings of Hilary’s life: kitchen, sofa, bedroom and a fridge full of wine; and at various points they all seem out to get her. Jane Turner’s interaction with these unexpected enemies is somehow both funny and poignant.
De Angelis is adept at skewering old shibboleths as well as raising some sharp points of sexual politics, love and friendship. Her writing is also very funny and she can dish the one-liners to both obvious and unexpected effect. What is not so immediately obvious is the underlying seriousness and that’s because these ideas are disguised as laughter. Frances preens and twirls her perky boobs but there is loneliness and bewilderment in her determinedly cheery demeanour. Mark, Josh and Roland are in their different ways well meaning and decent, but basically totally hopeless; no wonder Frances and Hilary keep the French plonk industry afloat.
And then there’s the cougar issue that backfires so spectacularly and excruciatingly in an acid mix of laughter and groaning. Cam (Dylan Watson, STC debut and a gutsy late appearance in the piece) is a smooth-skinned, handsome 20-year-old who might be too old for Tilly but approaches Hilary with a compassion and interest that melts her in a sweet exchange that’s almost instantly subverted by the wicked playwright and her director.
Although Jumpy slyly presents itself as a nice, middle class comedy of errors (rather than manners, most of which are very bad indeed) there is much more to it than that. You can enjoy it as first-rate entertainment for its surface gloss and the exhilarating performances of the fine cast, but it’s likely you’ll find yourself thinking and talking about it later. And there can be few women of any age that don’t experience recognition, welcome or otherwise, in what goes on.
Jumpy is a clever and engaging play, beautifully realised, extremely funny and provoking by turns. Part of the amusement value stems from it nice English middle-classness, embodied by Hilary’s quilted car coat and scarf (costumes Teresa Negroponte) on the one hand and Frances’s Lycra camel-toe gym gear on the other. And as Hilary’s Home Counties voice is as much part of her character as her clothes, the same can be said of the others with voices ranging accurately across the class spectrum from brittle posh to glottal stops. (Excellent work from dialect and voice coach Leith McPherson.)
And if you want to know the meaning of the title, by the way, you know where to find the box office.
