Image by Work Art Life Studios and Black Photography
by Caryl Churchill
Directed by Jenny Kemp
Australian Premiere
2 June – 30 June
Previews: 28 – 31 May
Q&A Session following performance on Thursday 13 June
Duration: 55 minutes
Featuring Julie Forsyth, Marta Kaczmarek, Caroline Lee & Margaret Mills
Set & Costume Design Dann Barber
Lighting Design Rachel Burke
Composer Elizabeth Drake
Lighting Design Assistant Christopher Maxwell
Sound Engineer Justin Gardam
Stage Manager Jackie Mates
Assistant Stage Manager Rachel Patterson
“I’m walking down the street and there’s a door in the fence open and inside are three women I’ve seen before.”
A sun-drenched suburban backyard, four older women: Vi, Sally and Lena and the visiting Mrs Jarrett reflect on their lives over the course of many summers together. A mariticide, an ailurophobe, a shut-in and a sometime lollypop lady. The years run into each other and the recollections take on a strangely unsettling tone as the neighbourly Mrs J takes turns as both narrator, and bizarre, cryptic chronicler of doom.
Churchill’s fantastical evocation of the mundane teetering on the edge of the apocalypse is at once a linguistic joy ride, a car crash and a theatrical marvel.
“a thoroughly worthwhile, fiendishly resonant hour of must-see theatre.” – ★★★★☆, ArtsHub
“The performances, by some of the country’s finest actors, are uniformly magnificent.” – ★★★★☆, Australian Book Review
“director Jenny Kemp has created a production that is broadly minimalistic yet simmering with subtle complexity.” – ★★★★, Time Out