Joanna Murray-Smith was long ago established as one of this country’s leading playwrights. She has won many awards and her plays have regularly been performed internationally. Peter Houghton makes his directing debut with Black Swan, therefore, on what looks like safe ground.
Houghton and his players, along with set and costume designer Tracy Grant Lord, have made Day One, A Hotel, Evening appear a better play than it actually is. The set is nothing short of stunning. A revolve plays host to a rotunda of rooms, which allow the players to move with ease from one locale to another. Due to its theme of adulterous adventure, the play is largely built on duologues, so as well as the hotel room of the title we need to see our six characters in their own homes and at work, so Lord must have kept a team of carpenters very busy indeed for quite some time. Her magnificent set is complemented by Matthew Marshall’s clever lighting, reminiscent of whodunit films in its use of shadows.
The acting, also, is beyond reproach. Michelle Fornasier, as Madeleine, even gets across that she is a character who is playing a character in her ‘affair’ with her own husband. Of course, the hotel dates with her husband Sam (Humphrey Bower) are not the only ones in her calendar, and Sam and his business associate Tom (Matt Dyktynski) have sexual agendas of their own, as have Tom’s wife Stella (Roz Hammond) and the new girl in town, Rose (Clare Lovering). Lurking in the shadows is Ray (Jacob Allan) Rose’s husband, who has a darker agenda.
Many are the deceptions and delusions of our six characters in search of themselves, and for the first few scenes we have what appears to be a classic bedroom farce. The adultery plot alone is very funny. It is well-realised with jokes and business, and now and then a flash of genuine wit shows us Murray-Smith at her best.
Yet overall, this play left me feeling disappointed. The moral of the tale – that in chasing what we want, we are likely to forget what goodness there is in what we already have – is somewhat overstated, and the murderous sub-plot seemed somehow divorced from the farcical elements, so the whole thing failed to form a cohesive entity. I feel that a lot of the failures possibly sprang from an attempt by the playwright to be too deep-and-meaningful. Let a farce be a farce, and a psychological thriller a psychological thriller, for never shall the twain meet happily.
By the way, don’t go to see Day One if you dislike the F-word. In some scenes it seems to turn up in every second sentence. But if you like bawdy humour and farce, and don’t mind them being adulterated (pardon the pun) with murder, you’ll get a lot of laughs out of this one.
Rating: 3 stars out of 5
Day One, a Hotel, Evening
By Joanna Murray-Smith
A Black Swan State Theatre Company production
Directed by Peter Houghton
Sound Designer/Composer: Ash Gibson Greig
Lighting Designer: Matthew Marshall
Set & Costume Designer: Tracy Grant Lord
Cast: Jacob Allan, Humphrey Bower, Matt Dyktynski, Michelle Fornasier, Roz Hammond and Claire Lovering
State Theatre of Western Australia, Perth
15–30 June
