“Judy Davis lights the stage … Life and death are ugly, and we get it in full force here”
Kate Gaul
3 Stars
Venue: Belvoir
Sydney
Dates: Until July 13th
The Spare Room by Australian novelist Helen Garner is given a stage adaptation by Belvoir Artistic Director Eamon Flack who also directs. Blessed with an amazing cast headed by Judy Davis this one is sure to draw the crowds – even though its bleak content isn’t particularly fun. Cancer. Death. And those who care for us at the end.
After going through multiple rounds of chemotherapy and radiation, Nicola (Elizabeth Alexander) decides to stay with her old friend Helen (Judy Davis) in Melbourne for three weeks while she undertakes an alternative cancer treatment. From Vitamin C- infused IV drips to sitting naked in “ozone saunas”, these alternative therapies make some unfounded claims about killing the cancer. The three weeks force both Nicola and Helen to go beyond the platitudes and formalities, to confront imminent, untimely death and what it takes to support someone through this final journey. As one would expect, Judy Davis lights the stage playing Helen Garner’s seemingly unsympathetic narrator, friend, career and confidante. It is abrasive and if you’re looking for poetry this is not the production for you. Life and death are ugly, and we get it in full force here. Elizabeth Alexander plays a surprisingly doddery patient who is all sugar coating – this is part of her defence mechanism as she has become the bed wetting patient of an old and trusted friend.
A beaut ensemble fills out the minor roles with Emma Diaz, Alan Dukes and Helen Waterman – their work is clear, crisp and a foil to the more complex portrayals in our main characters here. The welcome addition of a live musician – cellist Anthea Cotee playing music composed by Steve Francis – adds to the essential live-ness of the event. She is sometimes conducted by Davis to commence an underscore or moment of relief, grief or failure. This adds to Davis role of friend, narrator, writer and guide.
Death of course is a perennial theme of art, particularly theatre as theatre itself becomes a metaphor for life. A perfect antithesis. For some, the theme of death is more important than life itself. Unlike the poets, Helen Garner doesn’t let the “big themes” do her work. The story and its rendering are deceptively straight forward, and it matters what happens to these “characters”. Flack and his collaborators have
remained true to this eloquent simplicity to provide us with a sobering contemplation of how death enters the life of these women. Preparing a space for one’s own death is different from preparing a space wherein someone else’s death unfolds. Medieval “The Art of Dying” – Ars Moriendi tracts – instructed people on how to “die well”. They also instructed the family and friends of dying people on how to treat them, and in a way, “The Spare Room” is an explication of this idea: how to prepare a space for someone else to spend time dying, not only as a spare room in a house, but also as a mental space in one’s head and life, to accommodate the rage, fear and sadness of a dying person.
A strong adaptation from novel to stage and take a stiff drink in with you!
Kate Gaul, Theatre Now
