Roslyn Packer Theatre, October 3
8.5/10
John Cleese once observed that an English person’s greatest fear was embarrassment. This is the premise behind British writer Steven Moffat’s debut play – and what a debut! Moffat, having written scores of TV scripts (including Sherlock and Dr Who), has turned to theatre with all the assurance of years of crafting characters, plot, dialogue and, here, side-splitting comedy.
The pin around which the whizzing Catherine wheel of laughs revolves is Elsa Jean Krakowski, a middle-aged American who hails (loudly) from Denver. She’s as absurdly optimistic as a golden retriever who can smell a treat, and as garish as a toddler’s vomit after excessive M&Ms. Helen Thomson plays her to the hilt in a performance that guarantees Elsa commands the stage whenever present.
London couple Debbie (Alex Lee) and Peter Lindell (Tim Walter) have met Elsa on a cruise. She insists they look her up if they’re ever in Denver, to which they readily acquiesce: a trip to Denver is as likely as either of them murdering someone.
That’s Elsa’s department.
Having extracted Debbie’s email, Elsa announces she’s coming to stay, whereupon Debbie Googles her, to discover she’s the prime suspect in six murders of close family. By poisoning. The Lindells, who have two teenaged children, Alex (Ty Arnott) and Rosie (Brooklyn Davies), are appalled. Or at least Debbie is: Peter struggles to work up much in the way of emotion other than anger over politics. Happiness, he tells Elsa on the cruise, is misinformation.
Once confronted by Elsa’s neon presence, the Lindells’ terror for their children’s welfare is far outweighed by their terror at being embarrassed by saying the wrong thing. Falseness and hypocrisy are their defaults.
But Elsa’s a cross between Mary Poppins and a wicked witch. If she kills – about which she only leaves jolly innuendoes hanging in the air – she doesn’t do it without good cause. Meanwhile, she’s equally capable of bringing out the best in everyone. Arnott’s Alex, for example, is the teen from hell: a flopping, farting, parent-scorning, computer-game-obsessed pest, whose default communication is whining – until tamed by Elsa. Rosie is also enchanted out of her perpetual crossness towards everyone.
Directed with phenomenal finesse by Simon Phillips on Isabel Hudson’s eye-popping set, everyone excels in roles to be relished. The expert cast is completed by Huw Higginson as the neighbour who would drive anyone to drink and/or fence heightening, and Ben Wood as the copper who’s like a bloodhound with a nosectomy.
Moffat is not in the business of judging his characters, but of painting them with equal affection. The comedy spirals in style between early Tom Stoppard (After Magritte, The Real Inspector Hound, say) Monty Python, Carry On movies and David Williamson. In that way it’s reminiscent of Shakespeare’s ability to pitch humour at all levels of learning, intellect and taste. Sydney Theatre Company just might have a hit on its hands.
Until October 31.