Presented by Early Worx in theatre and art & Higher Ground Inc.
@ Higher Ground – Art Base
FRIDAY 9th March (until March 15)
There is no time for the audience to orientate themselves, or ease themselves into this play- the lights fade, the stage illuminates and it begins, hardly pausing until the end. Ladies in Waiting is a play presented by Adelaide-based company Early Worx In Theatre & Art. The company was founded in late 2010, specifically to create more opportunities for emerging Adelaide performing artists. The play, directed by Charles Sanders, explores the experiences of different women in different situations and different times in different countries in the world, and stars three emerging Adelaide actresses, Hannah Bennett, Elizabeth Hay and Amy Victoria Brooks. Sanders explained that the concept came about in an unusual way. ‘I wanted to work with these three girls. We wanted to create a piece about women and for women, and we went hunting for scripts.’ The play is pieced together from several different, shorter pieces, and each actress has multiple roles to play, engaging with the audience in different ways through their characters’ monologues. The pieces are all very separate from each other as the women tell their individual stories, yet they are also all interconnected.
The basement theatre at Higher Ground, Light Square, provided a small, intimate space which was integral to the overall feel of the play. The set design and lighting were both very basic, which allowed the freedom to enact several different situations and scenarios onstage. Sanders deliberately chose not to use any music in the piece, as he did not want to manipulate the audience members into feeling a particular emotion. He wanted the raw environment to contrast with these women revealing their stories onstage, allowing the words to speak for themselves. This technique worked extremely well. While there were some lighter characters in the piece, for example, Amy Victoria Brooks’ portrayal of a young woman leaving New York to live in Berlin, and Elizabeth Hay’s young university student who is sleeping with a married man twenty years older than her, these were juxtaposed with darker characters, in particular, Elizabeth Hay playing a woman wearing a burka. This character returns throughout the play, sharing with the audience the horrible things she’s encountered in her lifetime. It puts the plights and worries of some of the other women into perspective.
All three actresses gave strong performances, although the stand-out for me was Amy Victoria Brooks. She slipped effortlessly from a Scottish accent, to a New York accent, to her Australian accent. The monologue her Australian character shares with the audience is so subtlety moving, and I believed every word her character said. All traces of the previous characters played by the actresses were completely gone by the time they reached their next. For most actors, knowing one character inside out to be convincing in a play is hard enough; yet these three actresses made playing several different roles in one play seem easy.
Even though most of the time the play allowed the audience to think through the themes and messages for themselves, at times it felt very didactic. I asked Sanders about this, and he explained that ‘the words of the woman in the burka are real words, every word spoken under the burka are real words of a woman who lives in New York. It’s not a theatrical experience with three actors; it’s about you and me having a chat. It’s a conversation with the audience.’ The very nature of monologues is that they are, or can be, conversations with the audience. After hearing the thoughts of these women so intimately, and being allowed insight into their lives, I found it jarring for the play to suddenly jump to more direct statements to the audience. These moments were very short in the scheme of the whole play, but even that was enough to take away from the stories of the different characters. Simply leaving it as jumping from a bumbling Western woman concerned about trivial things, to the woman with the burka and her actual hardships would have worked fine by itself. Still, I understand that Sanders was working within the constraints of staying true to what this woman actually said.
Ladies in Waiting is a play which will hook you from the start and not let go. It is definitely worth seeing. The play allows the audience to witness for themselves and experience the lives of all these very different women, while showcasing some of Adelaide’s young talent.
