THE GREAT FIRE
THE GREAT FIRE, Upstairs Belvoir, 6 April-8 May 2016. Photography by Brett Boardman: above - Lynette Curran and Peter Carroll; right - Genevieve Picot
A major new Australian play, a cast of ten of our finest, a setting (Michael Hankin) that fills the Belvoir stage with the eucalyptus scent and scruffy comfort of a rambling farm house kitchen in the Adelaide Hills. An investment of time, money and talent that promises much. What more could one want? Until the play resumes after the interval it’s possible that most would say “Not a lot.” But…
Kit Brookman’s latest – he seems to be churning them out right now – is that intriguing thing: a story that resolutely averts its gaze from an overarching event. (Think Andrew McGahan’s brilliant novel 1988: set in the year of the Bicentennial yet with not one mention of that national frolic.)
In the case of The Great Fire, not surprisingly it’s a massive bushfire that’s threatening the Hills. While its presence is casually noted from time to time and the smoke can be smelled in the hot summer air, it is as nought in the face of the smouldering unease within the family Christmas gathering.
Successful artists Patrick and Judith (Geoff Morrell and Genevieve Picot) are returning from Sydney to their much-loved and hand-built family home for Christmas. Their unknowingly unhappy daughter Lily (Shelly Lauman) and her emerging filmmaker husband Michael (Eden Falk) are currently living in the house on a peppercorn rent, but he is nagging her to ask for even that to be reduced.
Also expected from the city for the festivities are pompous elder son Alex (Yalin Ozucelik) and his heavily pregnant wife Hannah (Sarah Armanious) and, eventually, the paternal grandparents Mary and Donald (Lynette Curran and Peter Carroll). Unexpected is the arrival from overseas of sad, gay youngest son Tom (Marcus McKenzie). And then there’s next door neighbour and artist Alison (Sandy Gore) who, because she and Patrick and Judith are products of the 60s, share a party wall and a deceptively close and easy-going relationship. It’s a combustible gathering – as is so often the case with the compulsory happiness of family Christmases.
Because a house and the matter of its inheritance is where the family gathers, a sense of entitlement is the spark and money the fuel that ignites an emotional blaze. It slowly begins to consume this apparently ordinarily nice middle class family. Complacency, selfishness, greed and resentment begin to burst out like psychological popcorn: it quickly becomes messy. It’s also intermittently very funny and there are groan-worthy moments of recognition for many in the audience.
Belvoir’s artistic director Eamon Flack also directs the play and he mobilises the very fine cast with considered spontaneity around the sprawling suggestion of kitchen-living room and verandas. It gives each the space to reveal their characters and as the action progressed, the fact that I wanted to slap self-satisfied Alex, give whingey Tom a good shake and a kick up the bum to narcissistic Michael tells you they do it very well.
But…coming back to the but…the play runs close to two hours and 45 minutes, with an interval, and neither the basic premise nor its execution can support that weight. It sags and, in the second half, would collapse if not for the herculean efforts of the actors. Genevieve Picot, Geoff Morrell and Sandy Gore are particularly watchable and convincing while Lynette Curran and Peter Carroll steal every scene they can get their hands on even, in the case of the latter, when he’s asleep on the couch.
Talking to Elissa Blake in the Sydney Morning Herald earlier this week, Kit Brookman observed, “Other companies commission a vast amount but it never gets to the stage…Plays into which a lot of effort and resources have been put, fall through the cracks because there is a lack of rigour in the commissioning company.”
In this instance it’s a pity that rigour wasn’t better employed before this point. The show’s program/script carries the playwright’s advice: “If there is an interval it should come between Acts Two and Three”. Better still would be a stringent edit to cut the flab and bring it in at 90-100 minutes without an interval.
The Great Fire has some sparkling scenes and funny lines. It’s blessed with the wicked Lynette Curran and Peter Carroll and the rest of the cast is exemplary, but the play itself is – finally – not up to their standard and that’s disappointing.
NB: this review has been amended to correct the attribution of the quote – it was Kit Brookman, not Eamon Flack. Apologies.
