If you took Tennessee Williams, put him in drag, asked him
to recreate a Civil War ala ‘Gone With The Wind’ darkly comic piece with the
express purpose of respecting and subverting the genre at the same time, you
might come close to what Sisters Grimm founders Ash Flanders and Declan Greene
have created with ‘Summertime in the Garden of Eden’.
‘Summertime’ is a black comedy satire that defies every
expectation we have of the stereotypical Southern heroines, about our
etiquette, equality, gender and race, all wrapped up in a very non-PC bundle
but that we still recognise in its expression and walks the tightrope of
hilarity and offence. Sometimes, if I’m honest, I didn’t know what side of that
tightrope to fall on. If this play aired on the ABC (before the current government
shut it down), I’m convinced it would meet the fate of The Chaser’s ‘Make a
Wish’ sketch. It’s satire with big bite and if you present it your fleshy vulnerable
and conservative underbelly, it will slap it until it stings.
But Sisters Grimm do more than push boundaries in re-crafting
how we perceive our own conventions of role and genre; they do it with clever
material and talent. It’s tongue-in-cheek with substance and integrity. It
satirises pretension of image, of the sacred, of suppression and its
sacrilegious content can quickly have a serious edge that rescues it from
offence for offence sake. It’s unmistakably edgy yet played with glorious
authentic melodrama that lapses briefly into meta-theatre when even it owns its
own pretensions. It’s comedy deliciously served on a fluffy cloud of sweet
insidiousness.
I did spend the first twenty minutes of this show processing
how I felt about the role reversals and racial expressions, especially with Agent Cleave’s Daisy May
Washington. The juxtaposition of a handsome bearded man in a dress with
distinctly feminine mannerisms clearly playing a woman without ‘playing a woman’
does take a moment to adjust to as audience. Then there’s Bessie Holland’s Big
Daddy and Genevieve Giuffre’s ‘Mammy’, with dolly in hand and suddenly your
head is reeling with how on earth you could find the subverted convention of
what we expect as relatively conservative theatre-goers possibly amusing. So you have a choice: don’t find it amusing or
go with it. I chose the latter and was pleased I did, even just to enjoy the superb
acting from the ensemble.
Agent Cleave was one of my favourites. His focus and gesture
was impressive but Peter Paltos as Clive O’Donnell, Daisy May’s love interest,
was incredibly powerful in his role’s dimensions, as lover, cheat, liar, victim
and victor. He was utterly believable in a play that sets out to challenge this
very style and had terrific comic timing to boot. Holland and Giuffre also delivered sterling performances in
extremely challenging roles and Olympia Bukkakis as Honey Sue Washington was
thoroughly entertaining in her ‘Savage Garden’ (oh, the irony) solo.
Declan Greene has directed a twisted anti-play, anti-form
and anti-conventions in its gothic/ romance blend that shakes us out of our comfort
zone and immerses us in a new way to treat an old story. Marg Howell’s set
gorgeously typifies the extravagance and decadence of the Old South with humour
and irreverence and its destruction throughout the play is treated in exactly
the same way. The opening entrance of Daisy May captures exactly this idea and
sets it all in motion, emerging from unexpected places and reminding us all
that whatever you think you can hide, it’s going to be exposed in the next 70 minutes
of this play.
So give in, dance in the garden, smell the flowers, wrap
yourself in cotton wool then rip it off, choke on it and you’ll emerge all the
better for it.
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