Left – Sarah Peirse. Cover – Helen Thomson and Sarah Peirse. Photos – Brett Boardman‘The following is based on a true story’ is the projected surtitle on the spare, clinical set of Mark Colvin’s Kidney.
Playwright Tommy Murphy sutures the bivalve story of venal dysfunction inflicted on ex pat Aussie, Mary-Ellen Field, a low profile professional private assistant to a high profile ex pat personality, with the renal dysfunction experienced by high profile broadcast journalist, Mark Colvin.
Not far into the play, we hear this “You may well have heard about the saga in the UK of Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday tabloid the news of the world and its wide spread hacking of celebrities' phones and voice mail messages. What you may not have heard so much about is the collateral damage to people in the celebrities’ orbits. The majority of the hacking was on voice mail messages with detectives, paid by Murdoch’s company hacking in for juicy details of the celebrities' business or personal life. One of the celebrities already believed to have received a big compensation pay-out is the Australian model and underwear magnate Elle Macpherson. A non-disclosure agreement covers that payout but there's been no vindication or compensation for someone in her circle whose life was ruined by the hacking.”
Mark Colvin broadcast this story on Wednesday February 9 2011 mid way through that evening's PM programme.
In the play, this scene segues into another scene of hacking, literally, around Rawanda where Colvin is confronted by a Hutu man brandishing a machete. This is where, on assignment as a foreign correspondent, Colvin became afflicted by the virus which over time caused life threatening kidney disease.
There are symmetries, comparisons and contrasts aplenty in this double helix story – Field was accused of leaking private information, where in fact, she had been ‘hacked’. Colvin’s body could be said to be leaking toxins due to kidney failure, his anatomy ‘hacked’ . Both their lives were irrevocably changed.
She was the story, he was the reporter. His story, a life doomed to dialysis, became something she could deliver him from, by donating a kidney.
The cast is spearheaded by Sarah Peirse as Mary-Ellen Field, putting in a pizazz performance as the flamboyant PA. The play could just as easily be called Mary-Ellen’s Kindness with her exuberant largesse of empathy and ethical practice.
John Howard is physically imposing and dulcetly toned as Mark Colvin, not an impersonation but effectively redolent of the sometimes prickly, always precise, personality.
The supporting cast of Peter Carroll, Kit Esuruoso, Christopher Stollery and Helen Thomson busy themselves with multiple roles ranging from Thomson's take on MacPherson, Stollery's wry surgeon, Carroll's bemused spouse and Esuruoso's multicultural manifestations.
Despite committed characterisations from the cast, Mark Colvin's Kidney feels like a mismatched transplant, a graft of verbatim on to a more traditional dramatic narrative which, at the end of the two hour operation, the host rejects.
Belvoir presents
Mark Colvin’s Kidney
by Tommy Murphy
Director David Berthold
Venue: Upstairs Theatre | Belvoir St, Surry Hills NSW
Dates: 25 February – 2 April 2017
Tickets: $72 – $49 (Ticket prices can be dynamically adjusted, either up or down, based on real-time market demand, and without notice)
Bookings: 02 9699 3444
