This production of Honour by Joanna Murray-Smith, produced by Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre for the play’s 30th anniversary, remains riveting viewing, thanks to thoughtful direction and excellent performances; although 30 years on, it can’t help but feel dated.
The four-hander is a drawing room style play, exploring ideas of infidelity, long-term relationships, family, love and desire. First performed in 1995, Honour is about a couple, George and Honor, and the collapse of their marriage after George falls in love with a much younger women who is doing a profile of him for a book, as one of 10 ‘great thinkers’.
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When the play was written, we were 15 years off Julia Gillard becoming the first woman Prime Minister of this country; it was also 15 years before the introduction of the Paid Parental Leave Act 2010, 22 years before the #MeToo movement and 21 years before women were able to play professional football in this country.
To a modern audience, the idea of a middle-class educated woman ‘giving up’ her career to support her successful journalist husband seems like an economic impossibility, and the idea of a well-into-middle-age man throwing his life away for an ambitious 29-year-old woman who strokes his ego seems so cliched it’s hard not to roll your eyes – and, to be fair, there was a bit of that from the audience when this reviewer attended.
The play is – like all Murray-Smith’s plays – wordy, and full of epigrams that feel as if they were written to be quoted at someone at a dinner party, while sporting a wry Wildean grin. It’s rapid-fire verbal sparring across charged scene after charged scene, with characters and ideas and points of view pitted against each other – as Claudia challenges Honor in her own home (while Claudia is waiting for George to arrive for his interview) on all that she has given up to support George’s career; as Claudia seduces George as she interviews him, her admiration for his success energising him, with her frank discussion of sex and desire turning the confident intellectual into a giddy boy; and as George tells Honor he is leaving her because he doesn’t feel passion for her anymore (and he’s going to shack up with Claudia).
Honor can’t believe George is leaving her for such a vastly younger woman, so close in age to that of their daughter, Sophie. And why didn’t he give her a hint then, as to how he was feeling? In a strong performance by Lucinda Smith, conveying an appropriately youthful mix of earnest outrage, fragility and uncertainty, Sophie is disgusted by her father’s behaviour but, in a case of Victim Blaming 101, demands to know how her mother didn’t see it coming. There are always signs, she says, how did Honor not see them?
Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre, a tiny little actor-led theatre company that operates out of a converted shipping crate in the car park of a church in Melbourne’s St Kilda East, has brought on the very experienced practitioner Sam Strong to direct Honour. Strong, the former artistic director of both the Queensland Theatre Company and Griffin Theatre Company, last year directed the massively successful dramatisation of Trent Dalton’s Love Stories at QPAC, as part of the Brisbane Festival.
Here, the love story he’s dealing with isn’t as big budget, nor nearly as heart-warming – but by stripping back the play to the fundamental drama between characters, and by some careful casting that helps alleviate some of the anachronisms of the play, it remains dramatically satisfying.
Under Strong’s direction, the action of the play is brought up and forward – the stark, all-white stage (designed by Jacob Battista and Sophie Woodward) is elevated, with steps at either side of the stage connecting to the floor of the theatre. The four actors sit on chairs at floor level when not engaged in their scenes, watching the action while remaining visible to the audience. Characters on stage sometimes glance at the actors offstage, connecting their characters to the action.
The overall effect is to keep the pace up, to allow for short transitional moments between scenes where we see non-verbal exchanges between characters (George attempting to connect with Sophie as she passes, her shrugging him off), and to focus the audience’s attention on what this play is about. And that is the drama of the scenes between characters, and the witty, pithy, pacy language of the play. If Murray-Smith is all about words, this is words served up on a big white plate.
The groan-inducing story of an older man finding love with a younger woman who tickles his ego and makes him feel that long-thought-dead sensation of eros once again, is made believable onstage by the excellent performance from Peter Houghton as George, whose confident carapace of career success and experience is punctured by Claudia – crumbling to reveal a dopey lovestruck puppy dog. He’s ready to throw out his career and go sailing around the world with this sparkling young woman – not that she wants that.
Claudia is a sapiosexual, attracted to George’s mind. She wants a lover as teacher-figure – someone to help fill in the gaps in her knowledge and propel her to her own supersonic career. We, as the audience, can see the cracks from the beginning in this obvious mismatch, but George is rendered helpless under Claudia’s admiring gaze. Houghton’s natural comedic qualities and charisma keep George from feeling too predatory, and we just see him as a buffoon, dazzled by youth, beauty and the reflection of his own value in Claudia’s eyes.
Honor – performed by Caroline Lee – is brilliantly steadfast in the role. Honor could be played with a cracking fragility, inviting the audience to see her as a victim, but Lee’s Honor is a quietly powerful force, pressing the audience to (not feel sorry for her, because we know she’ll be OK) feel outrage for her being hoodwinked by a man who has been too cowardly to tell her of his feelings. For a modern interpretation of Honour, this feels like a smart directorial and performance choice, while getting to the heart of the why – despite the thoughtful direction – still feels dated.
Esther Perel’s Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence was published in 2006, bringing to a mainstream audience the conflict at the heart of Western, secularised relationships – the dual yet conflicting needs for predictability (stability) and spontaneity-craving desire. These ideas have become infused into culture to the point where it seems improbable that a ‘great thinker’ like George would, in 2025, not have thought about them, and not discussed his desires with his wife of 32 years.
Honor, as a 50-something woman in 1996 would have come of age before the second wave of feminism. It was a time when middle-class and educated women still did ‘give up’ their careers for men, but things were changing.
In 2025, perhaps Honor would be still writing, would probably have a massive Instagram following (why not?) because of her poetry, and George and Honor would hopefully be watching Couples Therapy on SBS (or have their own sex therapist) and be better-equipped to talk about their sex life together. Maybe they’d become polyamorous – who knows?
And if it didn’t work out, they’d get divorced. And that’s OK too.
And as for Claudia – performed by Ella Ferris as a cocktail of ambition, sensuality and the black and white rigidity of youth – while I can’t fault the performance, it is hard to imagine a post #MeToo-era young woman such as her being interested in sleeping with an old bloke, so he can teach her about Wittgenstein and Nietzsche.
Read: Theatre review: Pride & Prejudice, Playhouse Theatre, QPAC
While I feel like the world has changed since 1995 – the play still exhibits Murray-Smith’s famously sparky dialogue, and the production is excellent. If you haven’t seen the play – I’d still recommend catching it.
Honour by Joanna Murray-Smith AM
Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre
Director: Sam Strong
Set/Costume Design: Jacob Battista and Sophie Woodward
Lighting Design: Harrie Hogan
Sound Design/Composition: Darrin Verhagen
Intimacy Coordinator: Michala Banas
Stage Manager: Natasha Marich
Cast: Ella Ferris, Peter Houghton, Caroline Lee, Lucinda Smith
Honour will be performed at Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre, Rear 2 Chapel Street, St Kilda East until 23 March 2025.
