Chanella Macri and John-Marc Desengano. Photo: Daniel Bould
Vidya Rajan’s stage version of Melina Marchetta’s Looking for Alibrandi is told, as it was in the original novel and in the 2000 film, from the viewpoint of 17-year-old Josie (Chanelle Macri) but as the two-hour play unfolds we find it is not just adolescent Josie who is finding herself and questioning her future. In the second act, her mother Christina (Lucia Mastrantone) and Nonna (Jennifer Vuletic) reveal more of their own secrets, emotions and desires. This Looking for Alibrandi, a co-production with Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre, becomes the story of three strong, Italian women and each one holds our attention.
We begin in Nonna’s kitchen in 1990s Sydney. The set (designed by Kate Davis) is littered with crates of tomatoes and Vuletic’s Nonna is nagging as she oversees the making of passata. Macri’s Josie is jaded, sharp and bucking against the Italian notions of what constitutes a ‘good, Italian girl’. As a single unmarried mother Christina is ‘cursed’ (as Nonna would have it) and if Josie’s not careful, she’ll be cursed too. But despite all this, it is clear that Christina and Josie have a firm mother/daughter bond, and Nonna is mainly talk (often in Italian, but non-Italian speakers get the drift).
And they are all ‘wogs’, negotiating the mores of 1990s Australia. Macri, of Italian and Samoan heritage, is on record as saying that her experience of growing up in Sydney’s suburbs was that ‘being Italian wasn’t such a negative thing. Being half Samoan, being brown, was much more of an issue.’ The ‘otherness’, the feeling of being an outsider, is still the same.
Josie – funny, clever and on a scholarship – contends with discrimination at school, embodied by blonde Mosman rich girl, Ivy (Hannah Monson) and is initially wary of Jacobe Coote (John Marc Desengano), who sees himself as an outsider because he won’t be going to uni. He’ll be a mechanic, like his dad. Instead, Josie is quietly in thrall to John Barton (also played by Monson). The son of a prominent Liberal politician and expected to conform to the ‘norms’ of his family, he and Josie are drawn to each other, but never progress beyond friendship. And neither of them are good Italian boys, so Nonna would not be impressed. Not that Josie is going to let that get in her way.
Her bestie at school is Sara, played with fierce humour and integrity by Mastrantone. Candid to the point of hilarity, her Sara is a joy to watch – whether she is extolling the qualities and possible commercial success of her own formula of bust cream, giving Josie some sex ed or deciding she’s clever enough to go to med school. Mastrantone is brilliant in both her roles, but Sara provides some light relief when the emotions turn sombre.
This begins to happen when Josie’s father Michael (Ashley Lyons) turns up unexpectedly, adding to Josie’s teen angst. An absent father par excellence, his arrival after 17 years stirs everything up (except the passata).
Macri’s Josie breaks the fourth wall frequently, and Rajan has supplied her with some great one-liners that she delivers with panache. And her vignettes into the future, delivered under a spotlight as she imagines her successes and celebrity are both humorous and revealing.
Barton’s troubled story will be familiar to those who’ve read the book and seen the film, so no spoilers for those who don’t already know it. Suffice to say, that the second act becomes darker. Arguments flare, secrets are spilled, Josie turns from John to Jacobe (not quite the baddest bad boy, but certainly outside Nonna’s idea of a good Italian boy), and Christina questions her own ambitions and future.
It’s the original story, told slightly differently. Nonna’s closing speech, her quiet recollections of a life of repressed emotions and scant joy, was deeply moving. Christina’s buoyant optimism and seemingly boundless love thread joy through the productions and Josie, as will be no surprise, is bound for greater things.
I did get distracted by the tomatoes though, and the making of the passata, which seems to go on for days. By the second act, I was sure those tomatoes on the set would be squishy and off. (The passata has its moments though, especially when Josie decks Ivy).
And the male characters – especially Dad and Jacobe – are not as well defined as the women, but then the play is called Looking for Alibrandi. And the three inter-generational Alibrandi women are strong and beautiful in this production, directed by Stephen Nicolazzo, which is well worth seeing.
At Belvoir Street until 6 November.
belvoir.com.au for tickets and more information
