Brandon McClelland and Marco Chiappi in Wayside Bride. Photo: Brett Boardman
Inclusivity. That’s what I kept coming back to, watching Alana Valentine’s new play Wayside Bride, the first of two works in Belvoir’s foray into rep. One is this new Australian play, the other is from Caryl Churchill and examines the aftermath of the English civil war. Both are about power and change.
Something of a Sydney institution, the Wayside Chapel in King’s Cross, was founded in the 1960s by Methodist minister Ted Noffs, a dynamo who took on the conservative norms of the time – and his own church hierarchy. The Wayside brides of the title were the women other churches spurned – the non-elite of the Cross, whether they were poor, divorced, non-white, prostitutes, drug-addled or simply misfits who didn’t tick conventional boxes. Noffs did not have a problem with inter-racial or mixed religion marriage. At the Wayside Chapel a Jew could marry a Proddie, or a Catholic or a Buddhist or a Hindu… love and inclusion were key, not race or colour or circumstance. Radical for the times, the times being the 1960s and 70s. And now? There is still tutting.
The first half of Wayside Bride is about the marriages. It kicks off – with comedic force – with a frosty interview. The playwright (Valentine gives herself a role and is played by Emily Goddard) is researching the stories behind the brides and is having a hard time getting her acerbic and defensive interviewee to talk. Then we learn she is Valentine’s mother Janice (a marvellous interpretation by Sacha Horler) and that she was a Wayside bride. It is a fabulous beginning.
Valentine says she wanted to write the play not only because her divorcee mother married her stepfather at Wayside but because there ‘was a little religious revolution up there [in the 1960s and ’70s], which I think we should honour and celebrate.’
Brendan McClelland, in a pale blue suit and white shoes, is the plain-speaking, all-accepting Noffs and Horler is back (and has his back) as his warm, forceful and equally far-sighted wife, Margaret. Vignettes of life amd love in inner city Sydney follow.
Most of the ensemble cast play multiple roles. Memorable scenes are Angeline Penrith’s tearful bride, too distraught to walk down the aisle without her father. Noffs saves the day by recruiting an elegantly dressed gay chap (Marco Chiappi) from the club next door to do the honours. Maggie Blinco is both the old lady who’s lost the plot (but not the poetry) and the bride who married her Australian-Vietnamese husband decades earlier. A happy marriage, but one that saw her disowned by her family. Chiappi returns as homeless Sean, living in his car with his Cockney beloved (Sandy Greenwood). Rebecca Massey, always a delight to watch, has some of the best humorous lines, whether she’s playing an actor or a sex worker. Running the gamut from ‘low lifes’ to church officials are Rashidi Edward and Arkia Ashraf.
But the standout scenes are all those with Ted and Margaret on stage together. McClelland and Horler are superb, giving us imagined insights into the Noffs’ loving and enduring marriage and the strains that lay underneath it. Because of course Noffs’ unconventional embrace of humanity upsets his church. He is accused of heresy. Suddenly, the Wayside Chapel and all it stands for is on the brink of extinction. That threat closes the first act and informs the second.
This is a play of two distinct halves. It could have been called Heresy. There’s a thing! Heresy seems more likely in Churchill’s play, set in the 17th century, than in 20th century Sydney, but there it was. In name, at least.
Wayside Bride has much to tell us about ourselves, about the church, and about inclusivity. It is a generous and warm tale, exposing prejudice while striving to overcome it. Something of a history lesson for those who know nothing or little about the Wayside.
It’s co-directed by Eamon Flack and Hannah Gordon on a set (Michael Hankin) that could pass as a church hall, with its bare floorboards and stacks of plastic chairs. (And a somewhat underused juke box.)
At approximately two and a half hours, it has plenty of vigour and life but could benefit from some editing. The second half is not so vibrant as the first, with its exposé of church and officialdom. Some scenes distracted. A wonderful moment when Noffs is in near despair sees Chiappi’s gay survivor comfort him, and then insist he dances. It’s a very moving moment between the two of them. But then it becomes a disco with all the cast on stage. Similarly, a colourful and be-glittered figure arriving with a costume or a rainbow sign were a bit ‘what’s he doing here now?’.
That said, it’s still a must-see. It’s refreshing, illuminating, and also an indictment on society. Back to Valentine again. ‘At the moment, when there is a kind of binary between the religious and the LGBQTI+ … [it’s important to remember]… there have always been religious groups that welcome LBGTQTI+ people and proclaim them as part of their midst.’ Amen to that.
Wayside Bride is upstairs at Belvoir Street Theatre until 29 May
Prices from $35 (Student Saver) through to $70.
www.belvoir.com.au
