Noel Hodda and Lucy Miller in Heaven. Photo by Alex Vaughan.
This is an absolute gem of a play. The language is delightfully eloquent, full of humour and insights along with some wonderful turns of phrase, the subject matter universal and the two cast members play their parts beautifully. Fifty-somethings Mal and Mairead (Noel Hodda and Lucy Miller) have been married long enough to produce a 19-year-old daughter, and while there may be no passion in their marriage they are ‘best friends’, they ‘rub along’. It’s only when they get together with some old friends at a wedding in rural Ireland, do a couple of things happen that make them question the boring old status quo.
For Mal, a buried queer desire, repressed in favour of a ‘normal’ life, suddenly resurfaces when a Christlike young man reignites his forbidden fantasies. For Mairead, a fiery and independent woman who married Mal to escape her own reckless romantic history, the weekend throws her face-to-face with the one who got away – and the ‘past comes back at [her] like a train’. Along with the desire.
The play is a series of monologues, which is apt as these two people live together but their emotions run parallel. Miller’s Mairead is on first. She’s candid, she’s funny and she doesn’t hold back. When Hodda takes the stage as Mal and tell us Mairead ‘doesn’t edit, it all comes out’, we laugh in agreement. More conservative, Mal has been sublimating his desires all his life, conflating sexual fantasies of Christ with young men who look like, well, his ‘saviour’. When his perfect ‘Jesus’ walks into the wedding venue, Mal starts making choices well outside the norm as a respected teacher.
The set is simple: a bench, and a backdrop that, thanks to lighting designer Topaz Marlay-Cole, could be heavenly stars or the glitzy lights of a wedding venue. Kate Gaul’s direction is tight and the 100 minutes go by almost in a flash as we, like Mairead and Mal, wonder at playwright Eugene O’Brien’s underlying question: what should we do to truly live. Heaven is a fierce, very funny, and heart-wrenching exploration of identity, regret, and the lives we secretly long for.
It is presented by Bitchen Wolf in association with Qtopia Sydney and it’s only a short run, until 31 May – so don’t miss it.
At the Loading Dock, Forbes St, Darlinghurst.
Tickets: $35-$45; https://events.humanitix.com/heaven-at-the-loading-dock
