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Miss Blossom Callahann.
 Stephen
House, one of Adelaide's most prolific and hard working playwrights,
can often be seen walking through the city on his way to another
coffee shop appointment. He's always working, too, observing
and thinking and considering angles for his next work.
He likes to write one full play each year, because as he says, "It's my passion and it's my way of reflecting contemporary experience. It's really important for me, and of course it allows me to keep working with these amazing creative people. It's a wonderful thing to have in life."
In his estimation his latest work, 'Miss Blossom Callahann' fits the bill admirably.
"I think 'Blossom' is good writing. It feels like one of my very strongest plays.
"I feel good theatre aims to have you there for every moment of the drama. You don't drift off for one moment."
It follows then that a good House play has a sense of tension which builds and engulfs the actors along the way, and so it is, he hopes, with 'Miss Blossom Callahann', which he is also directing.
'Miss Blossom...', as he tells me from the outset, has quite a strong history, even though it's a play which has not been staged before.
"It came about as a commission from ABC Radio National... and I nominated it as the project I would work on at my residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre... And I put a huge amount of work into 'Blossom'; I didn't start it until I got on the plane to go to Ireland, I started it in Amsterdam airport I think - and it was great to take away a project as a challenge, and to have a final finished and tuned draft when I got back. I came back and submitted it to the ABC and they loved it, and produced it, and it was on Radio National in June last year. What I did do was write two versions; Scene I was the radio drama, and Scene I and II was the stage drama." In effect, given the demands of radio for a foreshortened drama, House rewrote a longer version for the stage.
"So I came back with a multi-purpose play, and I was really happy with the writing and the results. I was writing in the most amazing environment," he enthuses.
The Tyrone Guthrie Centre is a funded arts building in County Monaghan, about seventy miles from Dublin. At any one time up to fifteen writers and actors and directors shared the facilities, so House was working through ideas and discussing his work with the input of his peers.
"We got together and read each other's work, and discussed each other's work. There were visual artists and they'd have exhibitions for all of us and we'd comment on their work... it was just an incredible environment to work in."
'Miss Blossom...' has been selected as a contemporary work by the Australian Script Centre, and was then selected for a season at the Bakehouse Theatre.
Naturally enough, House has pulled in the same actors as the radio play for the onstage version, bringing in Nathan O'Keefe to cover the new character (who comes with Scene II). O'Keefe performed in a House play from last year, 'Lavender Hope'. O'Keefe plays Junk, who is young and quite desperate and comes into these people's lives, wreaking havoc in a few short minutes.
Jacqy Phillips reprises her role as 'Blossom'... "She's going to be absolutely sensational. She's a real talent. She is Miss Blossom Callahan, who is a real character unto herself, let me tell you."
Rory [Walker] is Max the cat, who wakes up next to Blossom after a big night out, and Sheila Duncan plays the landlady of the boarding house.
"I think it's a gripping psychodrama... Blossom has seen better days, and she's in a situation where things are confronting," allows House.
In fact, the play is set in real time, such that things happen in the space of an hour and a half as the characters are onstage. Set somewhere in an Australian city, 'Miss Blossom Callahann' is laced with intense human relationships and House's view of the balance of power in those relationships. As with most of his writing, it's likely to be taut with sex and betrayal, and hope and desperation. House examines the driving forces behind his characters and brings them to the surface in his scripts, laying bare motives which in real life are most often kept concealed.
Alex Wheaton
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'Miss Blossom Callahann' opens at The Bakehouse on Wed 1 June.
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