“The Beating Heart of Art is set to start at The Little Theatre on the 6 May, forging a cultural pathway from The Hutt to Wellington and beyond,” trumpets the media release. And now this new initiative of the indefatigable Geraldine Brophy and friends has been launched, with the premiere of her new play, Sleeping Around. 

The branding for Nextstage Theatre Company recalls the original Downstage logo* but indicates a new direction, albeit in a retro venue. The Lower Hutt Little Theatre, was built in 1954 as a small proscenium-arch alternative to large auditoria (like the Opera House and St James), and the orchestra pit has since been covered over to create a large apron stage. There is an irony now in calling it ‘little’ as its 306 seat capacity exceeds such venues as Circa, Bats and the Hannah Playhouse.

A prolific playwright, Geraldine Brophy brings her trademark tragi-comic blend to her new two-hander, Sleeping Around, performed with Carmel McGlone in costumes by Jenny Bain, on a set by Ross Joblin lit by Lisa Maule, with sound by Colin Edson and directed by Catherine Downes: a strong creative team to ensure the success of this exciting and welcome initiative.

Brophy plays Barbie, an American Relationship Therapist from Honolulu, who declares, “Everyone has a right to happiness!” before regaling us with the tale of how her 27 year-old open marriage to Bishop (a surgeon) has been put to the test by his suddenly forming a sexual liaison with “stick thin Honore”, his French Pilates instructor. Hitherto it was Barbie who took lovers and Bishop who never complained. Karma is mentioned more than once as the play progresses.

By way of coping, Barbie has embarked on a world trip, starting with a getaway homestay in New Zealand, billed on the internet as ‘Camp Big Girls: The Great Outdoors Indoors’. Jen (McGlone), a nurse-on-leave whose partner has recently left her, has set up a tent and some other trappings of camping on fake grass in her basement. And Roger the rude cockatiel, though mostly covered and silent, is on hand to add to the ambience of nature.

This is not what Barbie had expected. Nor did Jen expect her first customer to arrive with six suitcases (“2 for day, 2 for night, 1 for shoes and 1 to fill”) and a horror of sitting on the ground, sleeping on a stretcher and drinking home brew, which is all Jen has to offer. While Barbie is compulsively upbeat, articulate and ever ready with positive affirmations, Jen claims to have no sense of humour and to actually hate people. As for happiness, she’s happy to be a misanthrope. They are the classic odd couple with lots to offer each other, if only they knew, which of course adds up to an ideal premise for comedy.

Strangely, on opening night, the scripted differences in character are not as clearly delineated in performance – in the ‘being’ of their characters – as they could be. Instead of drawing us into the intimate intricacies of their changing relationship, they present the play writ large. My guess is they’re over-compensating for what they feel is a large space to fill, whereas the acoustics in the Little Theatre are excellent, especially for spoken word from the forestage where most of the action takes place.

The clear delight and energy McGlone brings to playing her role bleeds into Jen’s character and is at odds with it. While I get that people suppressing their grief can hide behind a façade of brightness, especially when dealing with strangers, I cannot help but wonder how much richer the comedy would be with a more miserable, acidic and grumpy Jen counterpointing and undercutting the compulsively buoyant Barbie.

Nevertheless a wealth of witty one-liners and droll insights do help to deliver a comically complex perception of humanity that interrogates our value systems, exposes our fallibilities and shares our vulnerabilities. There is also an amusing through-line of physical comedy involving things to sit upon.

When this production settles sufficiently to draw us into its reality, allowing us to empathise with Barbie and Jen, wrestle with their dilemmas and engage more subjectively with the pathos while thoroughly enjoying the humour, Sleeping Around will have reached its undoubted potential.
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This from Downstage Upfront by John Smythe (Victoria University Press, November 2004, pp 26-7):
One good thing did come from the poster for Exit the King. Designed by American David Graves, who was tutoring at the Wellington Polytechnic Design School, it silhouetted a playing card king. The symbol in the top left and bottom right corners was a thin-lined logarithmic spiral with an arrow head pointing left or right. It was some time later that Martyn [Sanderson] discovered its significance, in an Evergreen Review essay on Ionesco and the Theatre of the Absurd, and Alfred Jarry and his play Ubu Roi. ‘Ubu had this bloody symbol [without the arrow head] on his jacket and they had a name for it [gidouille]: this was the symbol of the Absurd. And David Graves had come up with it from nowhere!’ In 1965 Martyn’s artist wife, Liz, refined it – with a broader line, half the number of turns and the arrow pointing downwards – to create the Downstage logo. Years later, on further researching Jarry and the pataphysicians, Martyn realised the gidouille symbol was ‘wildly, wildly inappropriate to Downstage, being a symbol of bloatedness, originally emblazoned on King Ubu’s paunch. But as a true pataphysician one could argue that its utter inappropriateness is what makes it so appropriate.’[i]

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

Odd couples create comedy. Neil Simon’s Felix and Oscar are proof of that, and so are Geraldine Brophy’s Jen and Barbie. 

Sleeping Around is an eccentric odd couple comedy with which Geraldine Brophy launched her Nextstage Theatre Company at a gala opening on Wednesday night. This professional company’s home is The Little Theatre in the heart of Lower Hutt.

It is not, as the title might suggest, a sex farce but a comedy tinged with pathos about two women: Barbie, a therapist from Hawaii, and Jen, an oddball gay Kiwi. [More]

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer