Jane Miller’s True Love Travels on a Gravel Road opens with young ingénue Maggie asking the audience a question – is any of what is about to happen her fault?
Taking the title of an Elvis song as its name, this play asks big questions about romance, showing how fantasies of love can create monsters of us all. True Love Travels on a Gravel Road offers a range of comic characters in a small town that find themselves victims of a farcical heist gone wrong, a blundered would-be crime committed for love by Jake (Glen van Oosterom).
Jake and Maggie (Emily Goddard, radiant in the role) are lovers. Each is ‘a little bit out of step’. Jake wants to make Elvis fan Maggie happy by fulfilling her dream of visiting Graceland. But as Maggie’s embittered single mum Glenda observes, theirs is a match made in a sheltered workshop. Maggie is married for a start. Jake’s not the brightest boy in town and his prospects are small. The phrase ‘giving it all up for love’ is put on its feet here in a nicely structured, very funny play, which treats all its characters with affection.
Trying to prove himself as something more than a ‘tard’ leads Jake on a hopeless course to acquire the money to take Maggie away. A secondary story hinges around Jake’s boss, Sam (Chris Broadstock), and his practical wife Angie (Marnie Gibson), exploring the consequences of their inability to admit vulnerability to each other.
This production, tightly directed by Beng Oh, enjoys standout performances from Goddard and Liz McColl, who crackles and sparks as Glenda – she has many hilarious lines to work with and makes super use of her natural funniness. However, to my mind, Glenda became stuck on the one subject and I would like to see her comment more broadly. Glenda is reflected on stage by petty crim Richard (David Kambouris), bringing a nice comic timing and oddly sympathetic presence to his hapless gun-dealing dog owner roped into a small town drama.
The success of the play lies in its blend of overlarge characters telling a universal story. There are laughs but audiences are also drawn into contemplating the small tragedies that result when romantic dreams blind people to the treasures in their actual, less glamorous relationships. We are invited to laugh at the characters, and they are funny, yet their respective journeys reveal how the commodification of romance injures the less worldly the most.
Beng Oh does a fine and masterful job directing. He was the first choice of director for Jane Miller, after they previously worked together on her play Happily Ever After, and he’s used many of the same performers from that production in their latest outing.
I thought there was the slightest looseness in the ‘hold-up’ scene on opening night, but that’s a quibble. The set employs an elongated corrugated iron construction, immediately shouting ‘country town’. It allows for some effective and funny entrances and exits and, at one point, a nice use of silhouette.
One notable thing about this production is the investment of the independent theatre community in realising the show – the team raised some of its production costs by a Pozible crowdfunding campaign, and the script was developed with the help of the State Library’s R.E. Ross Development Award, which allowed for rehearsed readings over a two-year period.
The results speak for themselves.
Rating: Three and three-quarter stars.
True Love Travels on a Gravel Road by Jane Miller, directed by Beng Oh
with Chris Broadstock, Marnie Gibson, Emily Goddard, David Kambouris, Elizabeth McColl, Glenn van Oosterom
Lighting design: Andy Turner
Set Design: Christina Logan-Bell
Sound Design: Tim Bright
Fortyfivedownstairs 15 May – 2 June 2013
Tuesday to Saturday – 8pm
Sunday – 5pm
To book head here.
