Left – Andy Simpson and Peter William Jamieson. Cover – Peter William Jamieson and Kitty Hopwood. Photos – Sundstrom Images“He is a philatelist” states Mary, in a fine bit of philology after being flattered by flim flam man, Dennis, whose flirting is foreplay to “fucking her over” on the true value of her grandfather's stamp collection.
Not that Mary wants to sell. It's her half-sister, the cash strapped Jackie, who wants to sell the collection. For Jackie, the stamps' duty to alleviate her dire fiscal situation trumps sentimentality.
The collection contains two rare stamps, known as the Post Office, a penny and tuppeny, issued in Mauritius.
When Jackie naively starts hawking the album around, the scent is picked up by indolent chancer, Dennis, an acquaintance of the appropriately monikered philately store, Phil.
Dennis knows a collector, Sterling, who would kill to possess these stamps, and proceeds to broker a deal.
The propriety of the sale becomes akin to a scam when the girl's already cracked kinship is rent asunder by assault and robbery, obfuscation and philatelic fetish.
Playwright Theresa Rebeck mines Mamet territory with testosterone fuelled fraudsters, simmering sibling civil war and a peppering of salty language, creating a suspenseful and intriguing script around the seemingly staid and sedentary pastime of stamp collecting.
Taking a cue from the canon of collecting – “it's the errors that make them valuable” – Rebeck writes fully fleshed and flawed characters with telling turns of phrase.
Brett Heath's Sterling is all silver back gorilla, a brute in a suit, a brawler with a Southern drawl, the money man unimaginably under the spell of the stamps. He exalts in the perfection, the colour, design and perforations, not the errors. Such is his fixation with philately, he (almost) literally puts the post into post coital.
Andy Simpson does a fine line in deadpan as Phil, still licking wounds from a stamping ground stoush with Sterling, and Kitty Hopwood and Emma Louise as Jackie and Mary dutifully duke it out within the frayed family feud scenario.
The driving force of the production is Peter William-Jamieson as Dennis. Duplicitous and fallacious, he nevertheless exudes that irresistible charm of the charlatan.
Rhys William Nicolson's cosy shambolic set with stamp shop downstage and the sisters' recently deceased mother's flat upstage is economical and effective under Louise Mason's lights.
Sure Foot Productions in association with New Theatre present
MAURITIUS
by Theresa Rebeck
Directed by Richard Cornally
Venue: New Theatre | 542 King Street, Newtown
Dates: 12 – 29 July 2017
Times: Wed – Sat 7:30pm, Sat Mat 2pm, Sun 5pm
Tickets: $38 – $32
Bookings: newtheatre.org.au
