The conformity, the boredom, and the repressed lives led by unfulfilled housewives of 1950s and early 60s suburbia are once more the fuel that drives many contemporary films and TV series such as Revolutionary Road and Madmen.

The happy-ever-after myth is being exposed yet again in Broken China which is for most of its fifty minutes a broad comedy in which two neighbours talk over cups of tea in the spotless kitchen of the perfect Joan about pineapple pieces in casseroles and the novelty of shrimp cocktails. The neighbour, Joyce, has yet to be fully accepted into the community as she is a bit of a messy dresser and she leaves her washing on the line all day.

The comedy eventually turns into tragedy and the play ends with the pair breaking the china on the now dirty kitchen floor. This act of rebellion was of course less flamboyantly dramatised by Ibsen with Nora slamming the door on her home and family in A Doll’s House, which, by the way, can be seen next week in a production by Stagecraft at Gryphon Theatre.

Despite tea being served from a coffee pot and the anachronism ‘quality time’, the typical 50s atmosphere is strongly established and Sophie Roberts as Joan and Chelsie Preston Crayford as Joyce play the comedy with a stridency and underlying desperation that allows the tragic event to unfold with some plausibility.
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Back when suburbia encroached on the semi-rural surrounds of towns and – in the spirit of renewal that marked the aftermath of two world wars – whole new subdivisions sprouted, a different dimension was added to middle class New Zealand life. Where swamps had been drained and hillsides had been carved away to flatten out the ‘easy life’ to which newly-weds especially aspired, Suburban Neurosis (a.k.a. Housewife Syndrome) was born.

This is the territory Broken China explores, as it gradually sweeps aside the niceties that obscure the truths of how it was out there for women, while their husbands commuted to their 9-5 city jobs. And because Joan, whose home we are in, and Joyce, who unexpectedly visits, have not yet acquired the language feminism will bring, their true stories are revealed in action and subtext.

I’m not about to give the show away here. Suffice to say questions are raised upfront: Why is Joan discovered in her undergarments, wearing rubber gloves and frozen like a possum in the headlights? Why does Joyce turn up looking she’s been dragged through a hedge backwards, clutching a rose bush, roots and all? And the answers are delivered without a word of explanation.

Meanwhile Sophie Roberts’ Joan and Chelsie Preston Crayford’s Joyce strive to play out their given roles as bright and friendly home-making housewives in middle class suburbia. Joan is the more fluent with lively chit-chat and veiled gossip, her covert hostility only briefly breaking through. Joyce tends to get lost for words when speaking up could help.

The larger-than-life stylistic elements – superb in their own right – work against empathetic engagement somewhat, alerting us less to what is being expressed and more to how it is being done. Not having seen the Auckland season I cannot tell what has changed after a week’s re-rehearsal with Nina Nawalawalo’s new directorial input.

The media release for the opening season [here] gives more information about the characters than is revealed in performance. (I’m assuming that in the absence of a programme specifying their names – now available in Wellington – our Auckland reviewer got them back-to-front.)

That I feel faintly irritated at the vacuous chat and their inability to communicate their real issues is, of course, the point. And having discovered, at last, what is really happening in their lives, my companion and I want to stay with them longer; go deeper with them into their truths. But without an A-class playwright on board, that could threaten descent into prosaic cliché. Fair enough then, I suppose, that we are left to play their pasts and futures out in our imaginations.

The on-stage ending we are left with simply points to the addictive means by which a ‘domestic goddess’ may self-medicate, thinking she is being a rebel while serving the interests of multi-national corporations. Win-win for them; no-win for the women.

A couple of quibbles: the so-called teapot is a pot designed for instant coffee (Nescafé was all the rage back then); the greeting card-like wallpaper and doorway are fine but the action suggests Joan’s kitchen is in her front garden; didn’t book clubs start much later (as part of the solution to the as-yet undeclared problem)?

Broken China speaks to the resurgence of interest in early ’60s chic – neat frock and apron (Joan); pastel-shaded pedal pushers and tight white blouse (Joyce); and of course the china – reminding us what style and smile can mask.
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For more production details, click on the title above. Go to Home page to see other Reviews, recent Comments and Forum postings (under Chat Back), and News. 

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer