The Time is Not Yet Ripe

The Time is Not Yet Ripe
Louis Esson
Presented by Here Theatre at La Mama
Until 13th of September

If one listens too closely to the rhetoric and attends too many forums on the state of Australian theatre one could be forgiven for thinking that nobody ever set foot on stage in this country before The Legend of King O’Malley. The New Wave have become the old guard and our cultural amnesia has set comfortably in now at a blurry distance of roughly forty years.
Thankfully however there remains one or two who have done the set reading and Jane Woollard is clearly amongst them.

It’s a little uncharitable to the author to suggest that Woolard has unearthed Esson’s fine work but before Here theatre’s remarkable production of The Time is Not Yet Ripe, who would have done more than wonder for whom the Prize for Drama was named?

Yet, in 1920’s Melbourne, Esson and his Pioneer Players were the independent theatre movement of their day. At a time when little confidence was placed in the validity of the Australian writer, when few new Australian plays were being staged and fewer published, it fell to Esson with his friends Stewart Mackay and Vance Palmer to champion new Australian writing - would that we had a few more Essons and Palmers with us today.

A lively farcical satire on the nature of modern politics, The Time is Not Yet Ripe pits the daughter of the conservative Prime Minister and her lover, the dilettante radical socialist, against each other in a battle for the hearts, minds and votes of Australia and the electorate of Wombat. Writing nearly a hundred years ago, Esson displays a remarkably prescient understanding of Sound Bite politics. Notably, he also takes the same relatively easy way out as many of our modern political satirists, condemning all politicians as equally as bad as each other. It’s not hard to understand why of course; as doing so leaves the audience feeling like the writer has made a serious political point without actually having had to make one.

Woolard’s direction of the piece is energetic and lively and as the cast clearly have a ball we do too. Kurt Geyer is impressively pompous as Sir Joseph Quiverton, Prime Minister, Ming Zhu-Hii as the ditzy Doris Quiverton betrays a natural intelligence and charm that is perhaps less the characters and more her own and Grant Cartwright as the socialist Sydney Barrett is an hilariously foppish maverick intellectual who manages to passionately stand for absolutely nothing. Particular mention must also be made of Georgina Capper as the delightfully pinched Miss Perkins, secretary of the anti socialist league. Rarely has such a sour faced character been played so sweetly.

The Time is Not Yet Ripe was rightfully given the Green Room Award for Best Ensemble production in the independent theatre category when Here Theatre first staged it in 2006. Given Esson himself grew to dislike the play, erring in his career towards heavier fare, Here theatre’s production might well give him pause to reconsider. At the very least, the revival of this classic Australian play, more relevant now than ever, should be a demonstration to all of us that there was theatre in Australia before the doll.

Danny Episode

Red Sky Morning

Red Sky Morning
Tom Holloway
Red Stitch Actors Theatre
Until September 27


Having won a slew of awards with Beyond the Neck and Don’t Say the Words, Tom Holloway is fast emerging as one of our rising star playwrights. Good for him.

Red Sky Morning is not one of those award winning plays, or at least it shouldn’t be though it probably will due to the mindless follower nature of our awards bodies. Danny has a feeling, though he can’t check Google because his internet is down, that it already netted Holloway the RE Ross.

Not for lack of talent in the writing however, let’s not get caught up in semantics. Holloway is a very fine writer and this play too demonstrates it. His weaving together of the choppy and broken dialogue is skillfully handled, though it is seriously over used. The test of Red Sky Morning is less a symphony and more a cacophony but writers are sometimes wont to overuse a simple device and drive it into the ground.

More questionable is his repeated hammering of his black dog motif (I wont insult my readers by explaining the tired symbolism). In a play about depression and it’s potentially disastrous amplification in the typically communication paralyzed Australian country family, having each of the characters interact or hallucinate a large black dog just reeks of laziness of thought.

Indeed, typical is the best way to describe the portrayal of depression in each of the characters. Mum’s a physical affection starved alcho who can’t talk to her family, daughter’s troubled young lass who beat the tar out of her best friend at school because she can’t handle the emotional turmoil of her home life and Dad’s a taciturn country type who can’t talk to his family and ends up on his knees in his shed with a gun in his mouth. The shed’s a particularly nice touch of banality in these home and away suicides waiting to happen.

The performances from Red Stitch, as always, are faultless. David Whitely, Erin Dewar and Sarah Sutherland all handle the text like pros and bring a touching humanity to their performances. Whitely in particular approaches heartbreaking with his soft spoken and gentle father. Sam Strong’s direction is at its best in its stillness. Some of the movement is a little awkward but is compensated by the depths he and his actors find in their characters.

Unfortunately in this city of mindless barking sycophants Danny has little doubt that there will be moved silence and the odd bit of discrete weeping in the stalls of Red Stitch over the coming month. Everyone can indulge their empathetic and compassionate sides and have the depression lite experience for an evening. It’s only an hour long so it won’t even be too taxing. Particularly as the trigger never gets pulled so there’s no consequence. Holloway walks us breathlessly to the edge of the abyss and points down into it as if to say, it’s a long way down, and then backs us safely away again.

Red Sky Morning demonstrates no real understanding of depression and consequently offers the audience no insight beyond a surface description of the condition. We all know what it looks like, show us what it is.

Danny Episode