THE SPARE ROOM
THE SPARE ROOM, Upstairs Belvoir, Belvoir St Theatre, 7 June-13 July 2025. Photography by Brett Boardman: above - Judy Davids and Elizabeth Alexander; below - Davis and Hannah Waterman; Alexander and Davis
Once upon a time, it was said of a certain, rare breed of actor that people would pay to watch them read from the phone book. Nowadays, those rare actors are still around, but the phone book is no more. Perhaps people would pay to watch Judy Davis read from RecipeTin Eats, or as a smartypants wrote on Reddit: “I could listen to you read out Reddit posts on TikTok”. Either way, there’s no mistaking the frisson of anticipation from an audience gathered for two reasons: Judy Davis and Helen Garner.
Garner published the novel in 2007, about a woman named Helen who has her good friend Nicola to stay for three weeks while she undergoes cancer treatment at an alternative institute in Melbourne. Depending on the imprint, The Spare Room is either 208 or 190 pages – and just 48,000 words – definitely spare and very Garner in its luminous prose and forensic examination of two lives, their relationship and the appallingly shonky treatment from a “professor” – actually a vet (animal, not military).
Eamon Flack directs the production and also adapted the book for the stage. At an hour and 50 minutes, it somehow seems both more and less than the original in missing both the depths and skating across the brittle surface. It’s a disconcerting set of choices that both enthrals and distances the viewer.
From the moment she leaps from her chair in the shadows at the side of the stage to begin, Davis is the febrile, somewhat mischievous Helen, instantly taking the audience into her confidence with a grimace, rolled eyes or cheeky aside. Most are charmed within minutes. This is assisted by the arrival of Nicola (a beautifully nuanced Elizabeth Alexander) as the desperately earnest believer in the “treatment” of poisonously high doses of Vitamin C, and an ozone tent on wheels, which is only comical if the $4000+ a week cost and meretricious nature of the appliance are disregarded.
I have to say that having cared for a dear friend who was similarly taken for a ride by a charlatan on the Gold Coast. He magically extracted malignancy from her abdomen, bit by bit, day by day, in the form of fine grey dust. After each session, we sat in the “recovery room” overlooking a stagnant canal while my friend dutifully ate sliced white bread, cut in quarters, slathered with Meadowlea, and sprinkled with 100s & 1000s – a special snack devised by the practitioner. The week cost my friend $12,000, then she flew home to Adelaide and died in agony a few weeks later. Cruel exploitation of the primal fear of death and the longing to live and be well is a hard ask as entertainment.
Nevertheless, those coming to see the elusive, mercurial Davis get their money’s worth as she skips and prowls Mel Page’s nicely minimal set of sketched spaces and purposes. There’s Helen’s kitchen, her spare room, the cancer centre (a hospital-style curtain) and the furnishings for each, including bed linen that Helen is forever changing as Nicola has sheet-wetting incidents. And each scene and place is delineated by Paul Jackson’s astute lighting.
Alan Dukes is splendid as a range of medicos – genuine and mountebank – and also as the magician at a fringe venue Nicola and Helen visit on a night out. His trick with small balls incongruously spins Nicola’s life-pinball on a new trajectory and captivates the audience at the same time.
Rounding out the accomplished cast is Emma Diaz, whose role, among a handful, as Nicola’s niece Iris, is compelling. And Hannah Waterman, whose billing as “Dr Caplan and others” obscures the range and watchability of one of our best character actors. Scoring the dialogue and action is Steve Francis’s composition for (I think) six-stringed baroque cello. Played on stage as an integral part of the dialogue by Anthea Cottee, it’s continuously effective.
Nevertheless, for me, there’s something awry with the script, which is a little pedestrian and literal, and somewhat dull where it should glitter. However, the production has had a bumpy road to opening night with illness and accident among the cast. So, with a company of this calibre, the occasional rough patches will be smoothed and the occasional dodgy grasp of lines will disappear. And of course, even though she’s not reading the phone book, Judy Davis is never less than riveting and is surrounded by the best.
