Roald Dahl and Shirley Jackson could have well been pleased if they had thought up the plot of Thomas Sainsbury’s latest hour-long feather-light comedy about a nicely dysfunctional family whose monthly ritual of a Sunday roast is sacrosanct, even if Anthony, the eldest son, is a sort of vegetarian – well, he was one for a month having been put off meat by the disgusting side of farming.

Phillip Giles is the paterfamilias but his authority and his health are undermined by his domineering wife, Leanne, who hopes to buy up all the neighbouring houses and farms in the valley so her children can live near by.

However, their daughter Courtney, a female Gordon Ramsay, and her narcissistic husband, Francois, have other ideas. So too do Diane, who has always come last in the sibling rivalry stakes, and her 13 year-old daughter, Tamsin, who wants to be in town where the boys are. And then there is the innocent Rupert, “the temporary son,” who is catnip to Tamsin.

Renee Lyons and Martyn Wood play all the characters on a bare stage except for two chairs. Martyn Wood plays all the male characters as well as Diane who tearfully recalls every put down her parents have made about her.

Both actors have fun switching roles and scenes in nanoseconds and keeping the comedy bubbling along, despite a confusion of Kiwi accents, in this deftly directed piece by Dena Kennedy. 
_______________________________
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

Thomas Sainsbury is so prolific it’s tempting to see his plays as a ‘fast food’ equivalent. But those I’ve seen are much more ‘nutritious’ than that and Sunday Roast is close to being a gourmet meal.

It’s easy to see why actors flock to be in his plays: he has an unerring eye and ear for true – if heightened – Kiwi characters with psychological depth; his sense of dramatic structure ensures interest will never flag; his humour arises from the veracity of his insights and never feels contrived, and the darkness he exposes in our psyches and society with comic precision cannot be easily dismissed.  

Sometimes actors ask Sainsbury to write something for them and in this case (as reported by the author in his programme note) Martyn Wood’s request for a two-hander about a family readily produced a flow of creative juices. One wonders if there is anything Sainsbury has experienced, observed, thought or imagined that will not eventually inspire, or find its way into, a play.

Wood plays five characters, Renee Lyons plays four, and with director Dena Kennedy – using just two plain chairs in a blank space unobtrusively lit by Sean Lynch – they brilliantly manifest them and their rural lifestyles in our imaginations. With unerring accuracy they capture the voices and body postures of their characters so clearly that no costume or prop adornment is required.

Lyons’ Giles family matriarch Leanne, her Kiwi vowels poshed-up from a private school, assuages her pride in their landed gentry wealth by taking underprivileged boys into their homestead and farm, while conniving to acquire yet another property from their “disgraceful” neighbours.  

Wood’s wide-eyed innocent and upwardly-inflected 14 year-old Rupert is suitably grateful, although he does miss his extended and loving family and becomes increasingly bewildered as to why he is kept a virtual prisoner in the flashest bedroom he’s ever known.

Courtenay (Lyons) lives in town and wins the bread by running an eatery while her Cockney wannabe model partner plucks between his eyebrows and attends to his slightly suss ‘beautymobile’. She has anger issues and no way does she intend to move back to town.

The other daughter, Diane (Wood) – “criane Diane” to Courtenay – has huge self-esteem issues sourced in sibling rivalry and is seeing a Therapist (Lyons). Her 13 year-old daughter Tamsin (Lyons) is both compassionate and sexually precocious in her own quest for feeling needed and getting what she wants.

The Giles son, Anthony (Wood), aged 31, still living at home and claims to be getting a business going in cyberspace. He is molly-coddled by his mum and a write-off to his ageing and ailing patriarch dad, Phillip (Wood).

On the last Sunday of every month the family gathers for Sunday Roast, master-minded by Phillip – his description to Leanne of the Valentines-style spread to come is positively orgasmic – and Courtenay always provides the pav. It’s a ritual that takes precedence over whatever else is happening for the family, and anyone who questions it or tries to back out is told the same thing: “It’s tradition!”

The light humour darkens as the play progresses and the ghastly truth rises inexorably towards exposure. Some may guess ahead of the revelation, others are shocked and surprised when it happens. Either way it packs a punch and the final sequence has us wrestling internally with conflicting desires for a happy ending versus a realistic one.

I am told it’s still a work in progress and agree the rather contrived expository monologues could go. It would be good to get to know Rupert more and maybe a process of interrogating its allegorical resonance could refine some details that would enrich the banquet even more.

But as it stands, beyond the wonderful opportunity it provides for excellent ‘less-is-more’ acting and directing, Sunday Roast offers a searing critique of the class system we like to think doesn’t exist in New Zealand as it slices into our rare and bloody rural rump.

This one must stay in the repertoire.
_______________________________
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