DREAM HOME
DREAM HOME, Ensemble Theatre, 5 February-28 March 2015. Photography by Claire Hawley: above Justin Stewart Cotta, HaiHa Le and Guy Edmonds; right: Olivia Pigeot and Alan Flower.
Much as we try to kid ourselves, the truth is that in real life, apartment living is a minefield of potential horrors. It is rarely as interesting, eccentric or life-affirming as Armistead Maupin’s 28 Barbary Lane of Tales of the City. Neither is Marilyn Monroe ever going to be occupying the floor below you as she does in The Seven Year Itch. In real life, it’s more likely your next door neighbour is a sad sack office drudge whose bosses use his place for noisy extra-marital trysts – Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine in The Apartment. And in their absence, your experience is far more likely to be akin to Dream Home, David Williamson’s cheeky, sneaky and newest light comedy.
The title drips irony all over the polished timber floor as Paul (Guy Edmonds) and Dana (HaiHa Le) survey their new apartment, lit by the rosy glow of their future life together. She is an up and coming (assistant) director of commercials and he is an up and (not yet) coming composer. She is heavily pregnant, they are happy and tickled to death with their home and prospects. We learn most of this in an opening unload of clunky exposition that bodes ill but a thunderous knock on the door changes all that.
Car parking and garbage bins are the cause of much inter-apartmental strife. Paul has parked their Subaru in a nice convenient spot that also happens to “belong” to Sam (Justin Stewart Cotta) a Lebanese-Australian security entrepreneur. Sam bursts in with all the force and slick menace of a low-slung Hummer, he is awesome to behold and he isn’t a bit interested in Paul’s white bread voice of reason.
In quick succession the rest of the block’s residents come to call. Henry (Alan Flower) and Cynthia (Olivia Pigeot) are an ill-matched couple from upstairs: a mousy sanitation engineer and a glamorous long-haul Qantas hostie. They snap and snarl in George and Martha fashion, oblivious to their appalled hosts. In their different ways Flower and Pigeot are perfect pairing and each is a delight when given space to flourish.
Across the landing is Wilma (Katrina Foster) , a passive-aggressive kleptomaniac and busybody whose entry with a freshly baked cake is a gem of cross purposes and bad intent. And finally, from upstairs where she lives with hubby Sam while they wait for the demolition and rebuild of a mansion in Bellevue Hill, is Colette (Libby Munro), his trophy wife and - uh oh - Paul’s old girlfriend.
It’s quite handy for the plot and other characters that Paul works at home on his MacBook as he is the focus of an increasingly heavy burden of confessions and secrets from his neighbours who trot in and out with the next twist and turn in the plot. He learns more than any man should ever have to know about the sexual lives and difficulties of Henry and Cynthia and his relationship with Sam – moving from ethnic enemy to bro and back again as sociopathic tendencies are exercised – is the best and most interesting part of the play.
Sam and Paul are chalk and cheese and the gradual reversal in their places in the pecking order of the block and between men is more than light comedy. Most recently seen as an electrifyingly dangerous Sweeney Todd, Justin Stewart Cotta shows he also has a deft ear and eye for laughter. His stage presence is dynamic at the least of times and here it helps make his blundering, hairy-chested machismo at once plausible and scarily funny. In an excruciatingly comical exchange about Life’s Biggest Question: what constitutes a too-small penis? Cotta and Guy Edmonds make the audience squirm and laugh by turns, and also find the humanity behind the comic capers.
With two-thirds (10,500) of the available tickets already sold before opening night, it’s obvious that the audience for David Williamson’s brand of social comedy is as eager as ever. They won’t be disappointed by Dream Home as the situation and the characters are vivid and convincing, even when teetering on the edge of absurd. Marissa Dale-Johnson’s set is evocative and uncluttered and her costumes are just this side of cartoonish and work well.
Nevertheless, there is evidence that another pair of hands and ears – rather than the playwright-director role taken here – would have benefited the play. Some of the language is anachronistic and jars: these characters would not say the words that occasionally come out of their mouths. (For instance, the talk of “making love” – when it patently isn’t that – would more realistically be “having sex”.) And there is a lack of pace that may well pick up during the run but would more easily have been whipped up by a director who was not also the playwright.
Dream Home is a light comedy, the playwright has been at pains to tell the media in recent days, and it is that. It’s also a lot more when Cotta and Edmonds are doing their man stuff and Williamson shouldn’t sell himself or them short. Another play lurks within. Meanwhile, this one is just fine and will polish up over time to be as slick as its players deserve.
