Rosie Lockhart as Ellen and Daniel Fredericksen as Adam. Image by Jodie Hutchinson.
A young woman, Ellen, sets up a new life in Sydney. She’s depressed and isolated, and, along with experiencing a love-hate relationship the city, she’s on self-destruct auto-pilot. Ellen is played by Rosie Lockhart who convincingly expresses her inability to connect. This is revealed in a succession of increasingly boozy and bleak one night stands.
The dialogue is rapid-fire and humorous and the characters are nicely (if somewhat overly) done. Jane Bodie is renown for her wit and this play is a treat in terms of funny exchanges. For me, however, it amounts to cleverness over heart. Even though we are clearly meant to tune into the characters, there is no-one with whom I can identify or especially care about. I can certainly relate to Ellen’s situation and her emotional state – but overall she is too bratty; I don’t get enough of who she is aside from being depressed and damaged and uncaring. Her indifference towards her experiences is jarring, although you can see how that is water off a duck’s back to the men with whom she becomes involved. I don’t get why Adam perseveres with her, even once we get a deeper knowledge of their past connection. However, Daniel Frederickson delivers stand-out comic performances as the young men and as Adam, the one who stays round.
Things shift when Ellen’s dad (Jeremy Stanford) turns up, wearing Ellen’s bathrobe, in a scene tinged with an odd seductiveness where we are invited to see him in the first instance as another of her lovers. Right then, so Ellen is still Daddy’s girl. They bond over the Ashes series of 2010/11. It has to be said that if you don’t care for cricket, there’s way too much of it in this play and it gets tedious. Dad explains cricket to Ellen using the ‘cricket as explained to a foreigner’ that was printed on tea towels in the UK throughout the 1970s. It’s funny, yes. However, he’s not really likely to put it that way if he’s a true cricket tragic who is really trying to instruct, rather than bamboozle, as to how the game works. It’s moments like these that the writer appears to be choosing to be witty rather than honest.
The set works around a nicely economical double bed, where the different bedrooms are signified by shifting the pillows to different ends – a clear device. Adam and Ellen share an imaginative roam around Sydney on New Year’s Eve. As a celebration of the highs and lows of life in Sydney, this play has some great moments, and would be of particular interest to someone who is new to Sydney.
Direction is by Tim Roseman and everything’s nicely paced, but there’s something about the play which drains away in the second half, despite the reveals. This Year’s Ashes does the trick for most people. It’s definitely funny and sufficiently entertaining. If you know someone who’s into cricket, or who hasn’t lived in Sydney, then you could do worse than to take them along.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
This Year’s Ashes
By Jane Bodie
Directed by Tim Roseman
With Daniel Frederiksen, Rosie Lockhart & Jeremy Stanford
Lighting Designer Hartley T A Kemp
Set & Costume Designer Kat Chan
Sound Design & Composition Russell Goldsmith & Daniel Nixon
Assistant Director Alice Darling
Stage Managers Elizabeth Downes & Laura Duffy
Production Manager Linda Hum
Red Stitch, Chapel St, St Kilda East
www.redstitch.net
19 March – 19 April
