Tag Archives: Janine Ulfane

The Sugar House

The Sugar House

★★★★

Finborough Theatre

The Sugar House

The Sugar House

Finborough Theatre

Reviewed – 5th November 2021

★★★★

 

“it’s hard to find fault in this production. Forceful, despairing and, I don’t mind admitting, quite tearful”

 

In light of this week’s #FreeLunchGate, I’d first like to say I was given a small plastic cup of house white at the beginning of the show. Despite this glamourous perk, I will do my best to give a balanced and fair review…

The Finborough Theatre is not a large theatre. In its current layout, it can seat 40, maybe 50 at a push. So to have a cast of six for such a little audience feels very exclusive, particularly after the seeming endless spate of one-person plays in the last year. It’s a real joy to see a full cast interacting, laying out their various intimacies and tensions. The stage is pretty tight, but The Sugar House is a family drama, and the small space only emphasises the family dynamics, sometimes chaotic, sometimes conspiratorial, the audience sat right in the lap of the action.

This is ostensibly a story about the Macreadies, a working-class family in 1960s Australia who are struggling to get out from under, set against a backdrop of Australia’s last state execution and a long unending fight against police corruption.

But it’s universal in its particularity, exploring problems of generational poverty, endemic hypocrisy and modern society’s love of destroying the old in favour of the new and expensive. And at its core, it’s about how painful and drawn-out real change necessarily is.

Director Tom Brennan has brought together a strong, scrappy cast. Everyone carries a double-edge of deep misery and wry humour throughout the script, and though I’m no expert in Australian accents, I didn’t hear a single bum note throughout, something I’d otherwise find incredibly distracting.

Janine Ulfane, playing the grandmother, gives an especially complex performance. Her character is loveable but deeply flawed, and Ulfane deftly explores all the varying shades between. Jessica Zerlina Leafe, playing the granddaughter Narelle, carries the main weight of the play, opening in the ‘present day’ as an adult, morphing in to her eight-year-old self in the ‘60s, eventually becoming an angry belligerent twenty-six-year-old in the ‘80s. It is a little bit jarring watching an adult play an eight-year-old for nigh on an hour, but given the quick changes and multi-decade-spanning timeline, I can see why Leafe has to play the child as well as the adult.

Justin Nardella’s design is necessarily simple, but doesn’t feel at all lacking. A white brick wall with a mulled window acts as both a versatile set-piece and a projection wall, showing footage of Ronald Ryan, the last man to hang in Australia, as well as the cogs and wheels of the old sugar house, where Narelle’s grandpa worked, and various other titbits. A desk and two fold-out chairs serve any other prop requirements for the most part, leaving space to focus on the cast whose number already nearly clutters the stage.

There are no superfluous scenes, or boring chunks of dialogue, nonetheless, writer Alana Valentine could do with cutting twenty minutes, just for pace’s sake. Otherwise, it’s hard to find fault in this production. Forceful, despairing and, I don’t mind admitting, quite tearful.

 

Reviewed by Finborough Theatre

Photography by Pamela Raith

 


The Sugar House

Finborough Theatre until 20th November

 

Other review from Miriam this year:
Tarantula | ★★★★ | Online | April 2021
Reunion | ★★★★★ | Sadler’s Wells Theatre | May 2021
My Son’s A Queer But What Can You Do | ★★★½ | The Turbine Theatre | June 2021
Lava | ★★★★ | Bush Theatre | July 2021
The Narcissist | ★★★ | Arcola Theatre | July 2021
Aaron And Julia | ★★½ | The Space | September 2021
White Witch | ★★ | Bloomsbury Theatre | September 2021
Tender Napalm | ★★★★★ | King’s Head Theatre | October 2021

 

Click here to see our most recent reviews

 

A Lesson From Aloes
★★★★★

Finborough Theatre

A Lesson From Aloes

A Lesson From Aloes

Finborough Theatre

Reviewed – 5th March 2019

★★★★★

 

“There are some careful directorial choices that navigate the claustrophobia of the relationships”

 

A Lesson from Aloes begins with names: ‘names are not just labels’ says Piet, naming the only thing that survives droughts, his Aloe Vera plants. The play is deceptively simple. Set in 1963, a year after Nelson Mandela’s imprisonment in a sleepy, dry suburb of Port Elizabeth, Piet and his wife, Gladys are throwing Steve a small party to celebrate his being let out of prison. But at the height of apartheid, the friendship between a white Afrikaaner couple and a black man is fraught with difference. What follows is a story that examines what it means to belong somewhere.

Names are important in Athol Fugard’s writing, (see, for example, Sizwe Bansi is Dead) because they can demonstrate the crushing contradictions of both feeling displaced and rooted at the same time. Janet Suzman’s superb production at The Finborough brings out all the difficult and delicate debates of this rarely revived piece. As the play delves into questions relating to the limits of white liberalism and to the boundaries of friendship between different races and genders, the play feels very timely.

This is a story about a marriage and a friendship after a crisis. It is a story in which love and trust bear the burden of lost hope and disgrace. Fugard’s genius lies, however, in the relationships he creates, and Suzman’s direction is particularly sensitive to this. There are some careful directorial choices that navigate the claustrophobia of the relationships as well as the Finborough’s small stage.

Norman Coates’ set design adds to this atmosphere with a dominating sandy beige hue that acts as a stark contrast to the green Aloe plants which Piet treasures as a sign of survival. Coates’ clever staging also evokes the fundamental interplay of the private and public spheres for at its core, this play focuses on the moments when the political becomes deeply personal.

The cast are so in tune with one another that they feel like people with long, shared histories. Janine Ulfane delicately portrays Gladys, a woman broiling with a rage that cannot find an outlet. Opposite her, Dawid Minnaar wonderfully delivers the mild-mannered, kind and proud Piet. David Rubin’s Steve is bold and convincing. Disempowered by their gender and their race, respectively, Ulfane and Rubin give shape to two very different kinds of victims, with different ways of navigating their anger. This contrast brings out a very poignant ending.

This is a fearless and nuanced piece. As a slightly longer show of two hours, it has the time to gradually build relationships and then, to push them to their limits. Though South Africa seems far away, Suzman’s production has brought debates about race, gender and belonging to, what was last night, a remarkably all white audience. It seems like a very good time to explore whiteness, privilege and political engagement with the sharpness and diligence akin to Fugard’s.

 

Reviewed by Tatjana Damjanovic

Photography by Alixandra Fazzina

 


A Lesson From Aloes

Finborough Theatre until 23rd March

 

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:
But it Still Goes on | ★★★★ | July 2018
Homos, or Everyone in America | ★★★★ | August 2018
A Winning Hazard | ★★★★ | September 2018
Square Rounds | ★★★ | September 2018
A Funny Thing Happened … | ★★★★ | October 2018
Bury the Dead | ★★★★ | November 2018
Exodus | ★★★★ | November 2018
Jeannie | ★★★★ | November 2018
The Beast on the Moon | ★★★★★ | January 2019
Time Is Love | ★★★½ | January 2019

 

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