Killing time: Georgie Parker and Sean O’Shea. Photo: Brett Boardman
Playwright Melanie Tait has penned a paeon to A Country Practice with this supremely entertaining take on what happens when a writing team decides it has to up the ratings of an already exceedingly popular soap by ‘killing’ off a beloved young mother and wife. Full disclosure: I never watched A Country Practice – which put me in a very small minority in the opening night audience. However, my friend and theatre companion filled me in. She still vividly remembers Molly’s death, as it seems, do most Aussies living in the country at the time. Tissues were required.
Central to the writing team portrayed by Tate is ‘TV’s most wanted serial killer’ Judy (in a neat twist played by ACP’s Georgie Parker). And in another little twist, the actual ‘serial killer’ and demolisher of Molly, Judith Colquhoun, was in the audience. Also on the team is cynical Bert (Sean O’Shea), who likes to wallow in Mozart’s Requiem; Dell (Genevieve Lemon), who’s alter ego is as a theatre playwright, none of this TV lark if you don’t mind; and a young nurse, Sally (Julia Robertson), who is essential for details of disease, its various symptoms and death. These are all overseen by Shaz (Amy Ingram), a biker and an ex-con with a disdain for sentimentality and a sharp eye on the ratings – and with some very fine lines, as supplied by Tait.
Simone Romaniuk’s set design features black-and-white photos of the original cast, including of course Anne Tenney, who played Molly and who wanted out, and the production is directed by Lee Lewis. The whole ensemble is strong.
It’s a neat idea and will, of course, appeal to countless ACP fans (sources say that 2.2 million Australians watched Molly take her last breath). What is true in Tait’s version and what is not I cannot profess to know (an Ensemble statement reads ‘this is a fictional imagining of the machinations of a hypothetical writers’ room. It is not affiliated with A Country Practice’) but the team goes through various methods of killing off Molly – such as drink driving victim? Suicide? Disappearance, aka Hanging Rock? – which lends the performances much diversion and a lot of wise-cracking humour. The mores of the 1980s get a look in, and of course the AIDS epidemic was new and shocking at the time. Bert has his own problems to contend with, as does Dell, so those characters’ backstories lend depth to their workaday problems.
I found the play a little slow to get going (but this may be due to my ignorance of the show; in my defence, I was overseas for all but the last four years of the program’s airing) but it certainly soon hit its stride. By all accounts, Tait’s research has been meticulous and for those who witnessed Molly’s demise on screen in 1985 it brought it all back in spades. And for those who didn’t? It’s an interesting and very funny take on how a writers’ room works. Some perfect escapism for our times.
Until 11 October.
Tickets: $43-90
https://www.ensemble.com.au/shows/how-to-plot-a-hit-in-two-days/
