“There are many questions justifiably raised in this play.…Questions you may very well be discussing as you leave.“
Kate Stratford
3.5 roses
Riverside Theatre
Season Closed but eight venue tour in progress with National Tour in 2024.
It has been decades since I read Colleen McCullough’s Tim and I have always remembered as a seminal novel, full of ideas which challenged the status quo and asked questions which many people found controversial. Intelligent, professional Mary Horton is content with her comfortable, solitary, emotionally-distant existence until a chance meeting with Tim Melville, a handsome young man with the mind of a child and a heart full of love. Despite the efforts of a loving family, Tim has been the target of bullying, although this is played down in this adaptation. What begins as a day’s labour in Mary’s garden blossoms into a life-changing relationship for both.
Mary is in her early 40s in the book but Tim Mcgarry has placed her in her 50’s in this stage adaptation which also updates the story to modern day. In his notes Mcgarry states this purposeful increase in the age difference is to make the story even more provocative. Mary (Jeanette Cronin) shrieks to her friend that with a 29 year age gap, she is old enough to be Tim’s (Ben Goss) mother and her struggle to accept her own feelings is the core of her experience. Like many parents of disabled children, Tim’s parents Em and Ron (niche performances from Valerie Bader and Andrew McFarlane) have failed to plan for Tim’s life without them. When a tragedy forces Ron to think about the future, the play is at it’s strongest. Tim’s sister Dee (a passionately sincere Julia Robertson) fiercely wants what is best but doesn’t know what that is. In one of his beautifully differentiated several roles, Akkshey Capias as social worker Raj outlines what Tim’s real, chilling future options are.
For Cronin and Goss this is a difficult ask but both navigate the maze of the relationship with a sympathetic reliance on each other. Cronin’s fussiness at times seemed out of character; for after all it is Mary’s calm and self-containment which intrigues Tim. And does she “fall in love” or come to care deeply for the young man with the golden heart and pure view of the world, who has given her life purpose? The script may have let Cronin down on this salient point.
Darren Yap’s direction is sure and confident. The set design seems a little overly fussy, however. McCullough’s novel is strong in the metaphor of a garden, and of being at one with nature. That Tim is a gardener with an appreciation of landscape is no accident. Whilst there were acknowledgements of the garden, there was a sense that there was a lost opportunity here to wrap the characters in an eden; to suggest future possibilities.
And if memory serves, Tim claimed Mary as his wife in the final scene when his sister verbally attacks Mary again at the funeral of their father. This was sadly, not in the play for it is an indication of just how much Tim has developed during the course of the relationship.
There are many questions justifiably raised in this play. Despite NDIS, many people fall through the cracks. If Mary were a male, and Tim a girl, how would we react? How does a family, and indeed a society care for our vulnerable? Do we have the right to make decisions for the less able in our families and community and if so, to what degree? How much autonomy are we prepared to hand over to those in our care? How do we help them navigate loss? And loneliness? And a sense of purpose? And a sexual life? And what are we prepared to learn from the people in our care? About difference?
Questions you may very well be discussing as you leave.
Kate Stratford, Theatre Now
