Scenes From the Back of Beyond ( Archived )

Reviews

PRODUCTION IMAGES – SCENES FROM THE BACK OF BEYOND

Martin Turner and Daniel Lapaine

Martin Turner and Penny Downie

Martin Turner and Penny Downie

Samantha Losey and Daniel Lapaine

London Theatre Guide, Kathryn Merritt, 8 November

After braving the cold of an autumnal London evening, it was a warming surprise to enter the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs for the press night performance of Meredith Oakes’s SCENES FROM THE BACK OF BEYOND, and hear the soothing sounds of summer insects. Kathryn Merritt was there.

Oakess family drama is set in Sydney in 1959, when Australia was at the dawn of a new era. The formal construction of the Sydney Opera House had begun and technology was advancing at a rapid pace. New suburbs were springing up everywhere and it is in one of these that Bill (Martin Turner), his wife Helen (Penny Downie) and their 15-year-old daughter Jasmine (Samantha Losey, in her stage debut) live. Bill and Helen are lapsed Communists and unhappily stuck in their marriage. But Bill is hopeful about the future “the real future, the one weve been waiting for” – a future dominated by scientific reasoning and advancement.

Bill sees some of this bright future in his neighbour David (Daniel Lapaine), an atomic scientist who has been thrown out of his house by his wife Mary after she discovered he was cheating on her. When David comes to collect his 10-year-old son Guy (Luke Bromley) for the day, Bill invites him to dinner, much to Helen’s dismay. When David is caught in a rather compromising position with Jasmine, Bill and Helen’s world is shaken. While Helen reacts emotionally, Bill takes a more intellectual approach to the problem.

As with any family dramas, the solutions are never simple, and the future of all the characters hangs in the balance, illustrated by David’s scientific observation that “everything we perceive as solid…is slowly melting down.” He may be talking about walls, window frames and whisky glasses, but the real meaning is inherently clear.

The intimacy of the theatre and sparseness of the brick patio set also provide the perfect backdrop for the confrontations and intimate discussions between the characters. The play may be set in the back of beyond, but the first night audience was privileged to be a part of the scenery.

The Guardian, Michael Billington, 8 November

Set in a Sydney suburb in 1959, Meredith Oakes’s new play is subtle, elliptical and intriguing. Even if it has odd echoes of Peter Nichols’s Chez Nous, it fulfils a basic rule of drama by linking private and public worlds.

Oakes’s focus is on a pair of lapsed communists. Bill, who works for a giant American company that makes rockets, has transferred his faith in Marxism to science. His wife, Helen, still refusing to accept evidence of Soviet gulags, pins her future hopes on China. But their idealism is shattered when their 15-year-old daughter, Jasmine, is impregnated by a neighbouring atomic scientist.

I feel that Oakes, in order to make a point, exaggerates the amorality of the scientist who argues that “responsibility isn’t a concept, it’s a feeling”. But what she does capture is the gullibility of people like Bill and Helen who, having abandoned the party, crave some alternative belief system. Within 90 minutes, Oakes also conveys the atmosphere of 1950s subtopian Sydney, a place where intellectuals drag their neighbours off to see La Terra Trema in the scout hut and where people vote for the Menzies coalition government out of fear of the unknown.

Martin Turner and Penny Downie as Bill and Helen show how a fractious marriage is sustained by a shared, head-in-the-clouds optimism, and Samantha Losey neatly conveys the emotional bewilderment of the jeopardised Jasmine. For the second time this year – the first was in Henry VIII at Stratford – a real baby made a sensational climactic appearance. I’m only sorry to hear that it will be replaced by a doll for the rest of the run.