Tomorrow, Linda marries Dave. But tonight is the stags and hens’ parties.
Willy Russell’s play was first produced in 1978 and the action occurs in a dump of a disco in Liverpool in England.
Though it’s nearly fifty years old and set in a foreign country, it’s terrific to see this play on a contemporary Sydney stage. (Though, I must admit, it took a while for my ear to become accustomed to the accents.)
Firstly, it’s very funny. And under the direction of Johann Walraven, the cast commit fully to the comedy. The entire ensemble is brilliantly hilarious.
On the night I saw the show, some members of the audience gasped at some of Russell’s one-liners. Perhaps they thought them politically incorrect? But the awful things some of the characters say, especially the men, are key to Russell’s satire. He’s targeting working class brutality, its fatalism and its seeming inability to tolerate individuality.
But despite the satire, it’s a sympathetic portrait. There’s a heart-rending sense of missed opportunity, and this is enhanced by the casts’ skill in making the characters likeable, imbuing them with tremendous energy, which has the impact of highlighting how that energy is ultimately either misdirected or thwarted. Chester Lenihan as Robbie, the would-be lady’s man, presents a gloriously funny mix of cockiness and self-doubt. Kirra Jones as Maureen, the drunken cry-baby who just wants a fella, is both very amusing and powerfully poignant.
And when the play shifts gear, and comedy cozies up to its close-cousin tragedy, the cast are once again up for the script’s demands. Ava McClean as Linda, the bride-to-be, is enormously affecting in her shocked realisation of brutality’s ubiquity. Cameron Sutton as Eddy, the alpha male who lords over his herd but is terrified of change, is a gutsy, confronting portrait of dangerous fragility.
The play is well-named; despite the impending marriage, the focus is not on the personal relationship at the heart of the sacrament, but rather on the dehumanising potential of group dynamics. How do the stags maintain a group identity? How do the hens? And how do the two groups relate?
Maintaining a group identity necessitates policing. Both sexes speak a lot about mateship, but that never seems to go so far as granting each other genuine autonomy or individuality. Instead, there’s an insistence on conformity. It’s a very binary world: you’re either a ‘lad’ or a ‘tart’; you’re either with us or against us. This world of indubitable division is emphasised by the set; scenes mostly happen either in the Gents or in the Ladies.
With our current questioning of binary assumptions, it’s tempting to think we’ve transcended all such narrowness. But, understandably, marginalised people will always seek a greater share of power, and a group identity has long been perceived as one way this might be achieved. In fact, a focus on group identity is presently the height of political fashion and so – by drawing attention to the brutish enforcement that the maintenance of such identities can entail – this production firmly places a troubling, teasing, tickling finger on our societal pulse.
Paul Gilchrist
Stags and Hens by Willy Russell
Presented by Blank Slate Productions
Directed by Johann Walraven
Featuring Grace Easterby, Jonah Elias, Benjamin Itaba, Kirra Jones, Chester Lenihan, Jonathan Serafino, Ellen Peebles, Ava McClean, Cameron Sutton, Hunter Taylor & Madeleine Zinner
At New Theatre until 25 January
Image by Robert Catto
Theatre Red 