Left – Nathan Lovejoy and Belinda Bromilow. Cover – Belinda Bromilow and Tony Llewellyn-Jones. Photos – Brett BoardmanThis Year’s Ashes is a classic romantic comedy, albeit one with more bite, sophistication and depth and much more enjoyable in every way than your typical cinema fare. I imagine film producers are already circling to obtain the rights to Jane Bodie’s smart and entertaining script. And I can easily see this production having a very long and successful run at the Griffin and beyond.
The rom-com genre – as its many devotees will have appreciated – has been shifting to include more pithy, tragicomic elements and this play fits firmly into that new tradition. While probably the mildest play I have ever seen at the Griffin, this is not to underrate it as it is extremely entertaining, well written, charming, beautifully performed, insightful, witty and poignant.
The play is about a young woman, Ellen (Belinda Bromilow), who has moved up to Sydney from Melbourne. She is friendless and works in a soulless marketing job. Ellen spends her nights in bars, getting hopelessly drunk and experiencing temporary solace with a string of one-night stands that she resolutely refuses to develop into anything more meaningful. She is obviously struggling with some serious emotional situation and, as writer Bodie shows, new cities can be alienating and there is no time to deal with emotional difficulties in Ellen’s busy corporate work schedule.
Into this scene of self-pity, loneliness and desperation enters Ellen’s father (Tony Llewellyn-Jones) who she has not seen in the last two years. They resume their old, loving, joyful relationship, doing what they most love: listening to the Ashes cricket series on the radio together.
Tony Llewellyn-Jones is marvellous as the sad, affectionate father. They both take such pleasure in each other’s company, finding comfort in a ritual they have played throughout Ellen’s childhood: the tradition of never going to the Ashes but listening to it on the radio.
Through these scenes we see Ellen is a woman who lives richly through her imagination which has been developed by imagining the action at the cricket ground as she and her father listen to it together. Bodie’s play comments on the redemptive value of imagination and friendship. Imagination is a force in life that has the ability to not only bring joy and pleasure, but to rescue. Similarly, friendship has the power to redeem.
The play is not only beautifully written, it is very well performed in this, its first production. Belinda Bromilow does a sensitive job in the role of a young woman struggling with her emotions. She eloquently expresses both Ellen’s unhappiness with her life as well as her absolute contentment in the company of her father.
The male romantic lead, Nathan Lovejoy, plays all her lovers with beautiful comic timing and compassion and gives each of the roles a truthfulness and depth which makes them at once believable, heartfelt and funny. Lovejoy is a very a talented performer and invests his lines with additional comic touches that enrich the text and bring out the comedy in a way that a lesser performer may have missed.
In the play Ellen keeps her blinds firmly shut to block out any glimpse of the beautiful view, but Bodie constantly reminds us of the beauty beyond. Apart from its more serious concerns, This Year’s Ashes is also an evocation of summertime in Sydney, a city peopled by hordes of the busy, vain and glamorous, but also a city that offers a beautiful harbour, jacarandas laden with fragrant, purple flowers and the summer tradition of test cricket. At one point in the play Lovejoy’s Adam describes walking from Potts Point, down through the Botanic Gardens to Circular Quay to catch a ferry to Balmain so they can sit in a park and take in the view of the bridge, the Opera House and the Quay. A small, free pleasure.
A night at the Griffin is also one of Sydney’s pleasures – not free but certainly with this production worth much more than the price of admission.
Griffin Theatre Company presents
THIS YEAR’S ASHES
by Jane Bodie
Director Shannon Murphy
Venue: SBW Stables Theatre, 10 Nimrod St, Kings Cross
Dates: 12 October – 19 November, 2011
Times: Monday – Saturday @ 7pm, Saturday matinee @ 2pm
Tickets: $47 – $28
Bookings: 02 8019 0292 | griffintheatre.com.au
