Tough Girls
Director: Maude Davey
Vitalstatistix
Wed 9 Aug
Until Wed 16 Aug



Tough girls, indeed! Librettist Melissa Reeves and composer Irine Vela have bashed together a few songs and brought to Adelaide a black musical comedy that hangs out the dirty laundry of Melbourne's crooked cops and gangland killers. Inspired by the police and Mafia-style mayhem that took place in the Victorian capital in the late '80s, Reeves has focused, not on the trigger-happy perpetrators, but on the laundresses. She muses on the mindset of the wife of the gangster who is accused of cop-killing and who's turned state's evidence, of her slightly bent yet proud lady cop minder, of the matriarch of the gangster's family, and last but not least, of the female junkie who is caught in their web by her heroin addiction. She, after all, is the tragic customer of what was behind all the violence.

Designer Cath Cantlon had half the audience facing the other half on either side of a narrow runway terminating with the claustrophobic segments of the interior of two identical caravans. One of them is the obviously inadequate safe house for the gangster's wife. How the mighty have fallen - her glamourous intent and stories of dresser drawers stuffed with money and shopping for bling contrasted with her justifiable paranoia and anxiety. Director Maude Davey certainly created a creepy and hostile world outside the tin door. Casting revolved around Eileen Darley who held the role of the gangster's moll since ex-Vitalstatistix artistic director Catherine Fitzgerald commissioned this project in 2002. While the opening banter with the police minder was rather too banal, the production exploded with the duet between Darley (Ella) and Caroline MacKenzie (Irene) as the minder and continued with the cops' fascination of the underworld and the moll's suspicion. MacKenzie seemed to step straight out of her patrol car and onto the stage - such was the veracity of her performance. She had her character provide us with her dignity, her weariness of years on the force, her acceptance of petty corruption, her sensitivity commingled with cop sense and her aspirations. Bravo! The early scene of Irene instructing Ella on how to act like a cop was frighteningly real. MacKenzie's impressive stage presence was challenged by Jacqy Phillips' inimitable gutsy style. Her matriarch transitioned from threat to companion in a sweet scene with Ella. One of the benefits of co-producing with Perth's Deckchair Theatre Company was bringing over MacKenzie and first-time professional Rhoda Lopez. Her junkie was the clown in the piece while resembling a Tibetan refugee from the '60s - she has a bright future.

Composer Irine Vela was aided by the multi-talented Stephen Sheehan in the live music department in banging out the melodies of the enormously enjoyable songs which described in detail the tit-for-tat violence and swelled the emotional complexity of the four women.

This world premiere production certainly has the legs for its Fremantle season. Wise move going west - I wouldn't be game to put it up in Melbourne for at least thirty years.

David Grybowski