Belvoir St Theatre, April 9
6.5/10
I’m sure Megan Wilding doesn’t mean to steal scenes, but her physical acting, timing and control of her vocal pitch are so complete that she’s a magnet for the eyes and ears. Even with very fine actors, you sometimes see the craft underpinning their art. With Wilding, you just see the character she plays, and laugh at every jot of comedy this character conveys.
In Dalara Williams’ Big Girls Don’t Cry, here having its world premiere directed by Ian Michael, Wilding plays Queenie, the most rambunctious of three young black women living in Redfern in the mid-1960s. Her friends are Cheryl (played by Williams, herself) and Lulu (an amusing Stephanie Somerville), and their camaraderie is a bulwark against the racism that pervades their daily lives.
Williams draws on stories she was told by women who lived through this era, and references the 1964 establishment of the Foundation of Aboriginal Affairs, the 1965 Freedom Ride confronting racism in New South Wales towns, and the run-up to the 1967 referendum that saw Aboriginal people finally included in the population. Vietnam is there, with Cheryl’s boyfriend, Michael (Mathew Cooper) writing to her from the war, and 60s-style pop music (by Brendan Boney) sprays the air, hence the titular reference to The Four Seasons’ 1962 hit.
Yet, despite the bigotry experienced by the women and Cheryl’s brother Ernie (Guy Simon), notably at the hands of a local cop (Bryn Chapman Parish), the play spends most of its time riding on a rare lightness of humour. Williams shoots for neither raucous laughs nor laboured satire, but a gentle comedy of manners, interwoven with conflicting love stories, primarily with Cheryl falling for Ernie’s friend Milo (Nic English) while Michael’s away.
Ernie, who bears the physical brunt of the racism, is proudly defiant, gleefully explaining to Milo that Australia’s whites are bizarrely loyal to the same crown that kicked their own ancestors out of Great Britain. When he’s arrested for little more than breathing, and Queenie’s fired for being late for work, the play darkens.
Here, however, Williams becomes less assured. “I’ve lost my job, but I’m not ready to lose my dignity,” Queenie declares, and even Wilding can’t save the line. Chapman Parish (who later is highly amusing as Lulu’s deferential date) has only a shrill white supremacist to work with as the cop, and the increased drama somehow doesn’t equate to increased tension. The problem is compounded when the second half of the three-hour play begins with Cheryl enunciating the debilitating effects of racism, as if Williams has shrugged off her character, and is addressing us as the playwright. The information was already implicit.
After this lapse, she steers her play back to the earlier deftness of tone, notably in a scene between Ernie and Queenie on a park bench, with Simon perfectly catching Ernie’s awkwardness, while succeeding emotions play across Wilding’s face.
Until April 27.