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Significant Others Director: Sean Riley The Bakehouse, Wed 24 August, Season closed Adelaide's Sean Riley would have to be one of Australia's most productive playwrights, and national fame cannot be far away. The Bakehouse hosted Riley's 'The Last Acre' in 2003 and it was one of the best new works of many I saw that year. Within the next twelve months he will have four plays performed in Adelaide - 'My Sister Violet' by Urban Myth, 'The Sad Ballad Of Penny Dreadful' by Windmill and Mainstreet, his trilogy 'Beautiful Words' and the current offering 'Significant Others' at the Bakehouse. 'Beautiful Words' won him the 2004 Jill Blewett Playwrights Award, and Riley just missed out on the $20,000 Patrick White Playwright Award for 'Significant Others' last year. State Theatre - hello? After marveling at designer Dean Hills' flying banner of play script, I laughed with the family on stage as they played a nostalgic game of rhyming couples. Like waking from a dream, the action sharply changed to another time. Riley cleverly transposes us between 1955 and the present as the story unfolds across two generations. Riley's characters reveal little, but the trickle of information was enticing: he provides his diverse characters with plausible backgrounds and feeds them realistic dialogue and interaction - this invites copious opportunities for tension involving conflicting character objectives. Riley's not afraid to tackle women's issues - sisterhood, the sorrow of miscarriage, and spousal loyalty - and he writes beautifully for women. He also often directs his own work and in 'Significant Others' has handpicked a remarkable cast. Andreas Sobik as Otto - playwright, dominant male and German WWII refugee - gave a superbly realistic portrayal of the self-absorbed artist. Completely out of touch with the feelings of his wife and always threatened, it's a wonder he's a writer at all. Eliza Lovell convincingly conveyed his wife's devotion, desires, and a sense of duty mingled with frustration. Kim, Liotta and Antje Guenther were wonderful as their daughter and an enquiring visitor respectively. Riley and Liotta successfully pictured the daughter as the under-achiever of creative and brilliant parents, and Guenther worked her seeker's sense of intrigue and disappointment. Hew Parham provided comic relief as another house guest - his mimic of Australian- and British-accented seagulls was hilarious. Noni Dunstone as Otto's visiting sister-in-law crafted a beguiling portrait invested with real personality. While playing an older version of the same character and giving her usual strong performance, Bridget Walters would have benefited from continuing the younger's persona. Riley has crafted wonderful characters and set the scene for secrets and conflicts by introducing visitors and an inquisitor to Otto's household in a complex weaving of past and present. Although the revelation at the end of the play and its implications for their daughter left me shaking, Riley was less successful in creating credible alternatives as to who would be involved, and a clearer presentation of Otto's alternative motives was lacking.  |
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