It is a brave actor bold enough to entertain an audience alone on stage for an hour and a half. I once saw the famous Welsh actor, Emlyn Thomas, do it with a recreation of Charles Dickens’ novels. More recently, I have seen the Australian actor, John Deerum, take on the role of C. J. Dennis in his memorable show, More Than a Sentimental Bloke. Now, I can proudly say, I have seen Susan Prince do it in this, her own play, pieced together as a dramatic biography of an actress who was born to the stage.
Gem, aged four, discovers that she loves singing, at age five that she loves acting, and at age seven that she loves the lot together – theatre. Very early in her stage career, she plasters Mum’s lipstick on to become a hula girl – in Grade One, to be precise. At age seven, she puts it on straight to perform as a gypsy in St Alban’s Hall, Proserpine. At age sixteen, she kisses a boy in the school musical – and she learns from her fortune-telling grandmother the five things that the future holds for her. They come about in due course – all five of them.
Gem’s journey through life is punctuated, as most of our journeys are, with moments of hilarity, others of intense joy, and yet others of poignant loss and regret. We remember shreds of experience and store them away for future recall in memory boxes, with keys like musical refrains or old snapshots, that act just like our passwords to computer files. Gem’s life is frequently recalled through the musicals she acted in as a girl, then as a young woman and later as a divorced mother, carting her kids along to rehearsals. Because it is in so many ways a familiar story – of life catching us unawares – it is our own story as well as hers. We live it with her every inch of the way. It is, however, Susan Prince’s versatility and sheer acting genius that makes Gem’s story resonate so well with ours.
That and a few other things about this production made it a joy to witness and to share. The Simone Tesorieri / Simona Cosentini minimalist set combines spectacle with simplicity, using pillars of aluminium foil and draped gauze to create spaces where present and past can meet, and where certain areas can easily be made to represent the dressing room for the school play, a flat in the naval married quarters in Darwin, or the set for the high school musical production of The Music Man. Equally effective is the delightful sound score by John Goodson, accompanying Gem’s moods at every turn, whilst taking the audience on a trip down memory lane with show tunes like Bells on a Hill and Somewhere That’s Green. Then again, without Jason Glenwright’s lighting (and, believe it or not, there were working footlights to this production) the set would not have appeared so gorgeous or so workable for Gem’s fast-changing moods and memories. I found the whole performance quite easy to follow, well-shaped and well-acted, and done with flair. That it all comes together so well is a tribute to the theatrical experience and vision that Suellen Maunder has brought to the task of directing – which has been for this production, no doubt, a labour of love.
Some 21 years ago Suellen Maunder, Kathryn Ash and Susan Prince joined together in a bold experiment to form Just Us Theatre Ensemble (now JUTE) as Cairns’ first and only professional theatre company. It is the kind of visionary endeavour one might have expected to fail spectacularly. It didn’t. Through sheer persistence and a determination to achieve absolute quality, they won through to create the successful theatre company that Cairns rightly claims as unique today. I cannot help but feel that the current offering, Is My Lipstick on Straight?, is both a celebration of, and a reward for, that decision of 1992. Gem’s story might almost have been Susan’s own; her dedication to the theatre might well be JUTE’s own. Don’t miss this one-woman play; you’ll love every minute of it and go out wanting more.
Rating: 4 ½ stars out of 5
Is My Lipstick on Straight?
Written and performed by Susan Prince
JUTE Theatre, Centre of Contemporary Arts, Cairns
29 May – 13 June 2015
Townsville season dates TBC
