Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
Girls & Boys by Dennis Kelly
Directed by Eleanor Bishop
Auckland Theatre Company
ASB Waterfront Theatre
Until September 22
Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
Boys & Girls starts of as a very simple play with a clear narrative, some well-honed quips and some nicely sketched characters. All this is deftly presented by Beatriz Romilly as the sole unnamed central character who we meet standing in a queue at Naples airport where she tells of her misspent youth and her as drunk / druggy / slaggy phase imbibing drinks, drugs and a bit of cocaine. She gives us her youthful world-weary evaluation of a few European hot spots – Paris is a dump – Leeds with wider streets. Italians are fucked up but great.
Its also in this queue she meets her husband who endears himself to her by putting two wanna-be models in their place. He is something of an entrepreneur, buying up old French and Italian furniture to sell in the UK.
Then its fast forward to her and the children, who do have names – Leanne and Danny. And she gets a new job. She gets to be a PA in a TV company. She is good at her job, rises through the ranks to the point she is getting Baftas.
The first half of the play is pretty bright, the sex is terrific, the children predictable, she manages to thwart a potential rival, it’s a good life.
The latter part of the play is a bit darker. His business starts to falter, she suspects another woman, they are drifting apart. Its at this point she addresses the audience, as she has done a few times before _ “I am if course, just giving you one side”. While she doesn’t tell us what the other side is she comes to the realisation that he is jealous of her rising star while his is waning. The conclusion is devastating and echoes some of the remarks she makes earlier in the play about male violence and she muses in her final lines about the way the world has been made for men should be to stop men.
As well as giving life lessons to the children the woman also imparts them to the audience in her complex role of mother, shrink and life coach.
In charting the trajectory of her marriage she has to confront the puzzle of the man she loves and Romilly is able to convey her changing emotional states from the early, witty observation to the visceral responeses she has to the final tragedy. Romilly also manages to transform the physical nature of the woman herself from a statuesque figure at the beginning to a crumpled form at the conclusion.
Romilly gives a brilliantly textured performance as she builds a portrait of the woman, transitioning from her early phase of her life to maturity with some clever vignettes as she takes on the voices of other characters.
The simple set designed by Tracy Grant Lord was a masterpiece of design – at times just a small flat wall, then a doorway, then a dark box -and was able to change the dynamins of the action while the lighting of Filament 11 added to the atmosphere.
The soundscape created by Te Aihe Butler with its sounds of the outside world as well the music of Victoria Kelly all helped create intense moods which were generally, extremely effective but occasionally it becomes unnecessarily obvious and masked the dialogue.
The monologue at close to two hours is a remarkable display of acting – subtle, comic, dramatic, unexpected and gut wrenching.
The play is acutely relevant in telling of the tragedy of lives and families ripped apart by male violence and its debilitating aftereffects on individuals and society.
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