It is 2007 and the 4 girls who struck it wealthy on the horses in Amanda Whittington’s Women’ Day (2005) are splashing the money on a four-week journey to Australia. One of many first folks they meet is Charlie, a bongo-playing hippy who landed on Bondi seaside in 1968 and has not moved since.
Performed by Gareth Cassidy, he’s a determine of enjoyable, an outdated stoner who will get his philosophy from songs by Joni Mitchell. His journey to self-knowledge is as drained as his Nepalese shirt.
For all that, he’s a pointer to the place Whittington is taking her breezy comedy, first produced in 2007 and now staged by the identical crew who revived Women’ Day on the New Vic final 12 months. After a slow-burning first half (do we have to see the entire flight to grasp they’ve travelled to Australia?), she places these former fish-filleters into an historical panorama the place the unfamiliarity, the Dreamtime philosophy and the odd puff of hashish prompts them to reassess their lives again residence in Hull.
It’s the identical trick Shakespeare performed in A Midsummer Evening’s Dream and Willy Russell in Shirley Valentine: characters set of their methods rediscovering their true selves when positioned in an alien surroundings. “Change your ideas, change the world,” says Aussie traveller Danny (Richard Lund) in a second of bumper-sticker knowledge.
The shift lets Pearl (Kate Wooden) present the vulnerability behind her matriarchal authority: “Out right here, I’m coping with me.” It lets Shelley (Annie Kirkman) get previous her designer-label materialism to reconnect with the common-or-garden manufacturing unit employee inside. It lets Jan (Tanya-Loretta Dee) drop her defences and study to be beloved. And it lets Linda (Jo Patmore) rethink their gender identification in a wonderful sequence on the Sydney Homosexual and Lesbian Mardi Gras that sends the present out with a transformative bang.
The revelations are extra pleasing than profound, however the forged make investments the play with a sisterly spirit, equal elements abrasiveness and affection, that comes from the guts. Director Marieke Audsley performs it gradual and regular, whereas elevating the power with some vigorous choreography to mirror the hallucinatory modifications within the girls’s lives.
