“It is a dense, often comic text … a lot for 90 minutes”
Kate Stratford
Venue: Flight Path Theatre
Marrickville
Dates: Nov 12 -22nd
Brianna is an online journalist set on uncovering local councillor Sando’s corruption. Micky is the local eccentric convinced Sando is linked to a cold case murder. Together they embark on an exposé which draws in Brianna’s parents Marion and Bill and ends up exposing more than hoped for.
It is a dense, often comic text; attempting to cover local council corruption, sexual abuse, vicarious trauma, sexual abuse trauma, environmental activism, intergenerational battles and a murder mystery. It is a lot for 90 minutes. There is much telling without really showing and the distribution of focus amongst so many concerns tends to leave it unclear about what writer-director Claire Haywood was trying for here. There are also a few Chekhov’s guns which never fire. Writers tend to have so much they want to say and it so very, very difficult to hand your “baby” over to a dramaturg or another director to help shape it for best effect. Something always has to give and it tends to be either the through-line or the staging. Sometimes both. Incisive directing is necessary when there is much to say.
As Marion, Di Smith brings all her professional best to this multifaceted script, finding moments of authenticity and real engagement. There is lovely differentiation with her sycophantic Daphne. Mark Lee’s Bill has been drawn as a somewhat typically dis-engaged older male whilst his Sando gives off all the ick most of us have felt sometime with the grift of local politics. Susan Ling Young took a while to settle in the garrulous role of Mickey whilst Emily Sinclair did her best to hold centre with the shifting focus of dialogue in her characterisation of daughter Bri. The portrayal of the betrayed Lauren is one of Sinclair’s best moments.
Get Sando has a sense of New Wave Theatre, a pivotal movement in the late 1960s and 1970s that transformed Australian theatre by creating new plays about Australian life, politics, and culture by fostering a unique Australian voice. This play sits as a sort of homage to the genre.
Kate Stratford, Theatre Now
