Clearly this review is old news for you now, as I’m emailing because the comments function on your blog is no longer open, but I just saw this play in Melbourne on the weekend (I’m from Tassie) and wanted to respond to your thoughts. (I don’t know anyone else in Tassie who has seen it, so I’ve been turning to the internets for debriefs!)

I’ve been googling reviews and responses to the play over the last couple of days, because it really stuck with me. Mostly because it was such a disappointment. So I was heartened to read your review, and also James Waites’ strong response. I’m a sometime theatre reviewer here in Hobart, working for our daily paper and also writing for an independent, collective reviewing blog which emerged out of a program run during Ten Days on the Island two years ago (at which James was one of our mentors). And I’m often ambivalent about the job. So I found your honesty and James’ groundedness and passion quite invigorating.

I agree with both of you about the play. Except I actually really did love it, but for no valid artistic reasons! (I think I just fell in love with the dresses and candles and snow and the misplaced romanticism…) I went because I’ve deeply respected both Jacqui McKenzie and Pamela Rabe’s work for many years. But I was so utterly disappointed with both of them, and couldn’t quite figure out whether it was really just an incredibly ordinary piece of writing, or whether the production should claim some responsibility too.

The one truly redeeming feature for me was Helen Thomson’s performance: I thought she was almost wonderful, and could have been wonderful with a little more help from the script and the direction. Mostly, I felt the interpretive decisions were weak, lazy, and patronising.

Anyway, thanks for your opinions and happy reviewing

Kind regards,
Anica Boulanger-Mashberg

It seemed to me to be a “titter fest’ play for the ageing subscriber list that is the STC. Obvious humour, braod acting, broad direction and lazy writing.

A one act play dragged out to two acts with little or no character development. An easy option for all.

Maybe I should just go drunk from now on to the STC. At least I will sleep.

But that’s not the same as saying the play is a masterpiece or even a major work. It is a fairly slight play – a conventional drawing room comedy in the 1940s style – that is wrapped in ribbons of predictable gags to ensure that it is not rejected as feminist propaganda. It’s written with good intentions, and it has been programmed by the STC and directed by Pamela Rabe, similarly, without cynicism.

To me it’s a fun night out, well put together -end of story. For you and others I spoke to on opening night, there were darker disappointments. And that is for you to put your case. As I had to many times, for example, during when David Williamson was at his most popular, and in may view not every one of his many plays was great. And often for reasons that seemed outside the boundaries most people think a critic should stick to. Now most people agree with me, if for not for the same reasons.

No critic is ever right: what they do, at their best, is contribute to the debate. If we all say the same thing, what good is that? And in this age of panoptic marketing most of this city’s theatre companies and many audience members have forgotten this fundamental fact.

People can think about what you have to say. Ultimately they may not agree with you. That’s not the point. They are re-thinking over the play and the production one more time; and if they have anything approaching an open mind they will likely be enriched by having been challenged to think of it through from a perspective not in goose-step with their own.

To talk about it as the child of Ibsen/Wilde, as you mention, is laughable. This is a salutary example of just how far ‘marketing’ has moved away from the truth. barely acceptable in selling toothpaste. But selling art? Art – protector of the holy flame of Truth. I put In the Next Room in the same category as August Osage County which was, similarly a fairly minor piece of playwriting – also dressed up, sold and embraced as a major work of dramatic art of our time.That play succeeded thanks to the fantastic direction and acting in the version we saw in Sydney. Its true, you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. But you can take something that’s nicely put together, that nods and winks at important themes, and build it up to a level on stage where it keeps you so engaged at the time of watching it that you you have just experienced something rather more than just good time. Nothing wrong with a simple good time, but the trouble comes when it sold – and then accepted – as more than that. It undermines the achievements of those who done better – sometimes much better.

You mention the one ‘non-white’ character – the black wet nurse, who is treated with kid gloves by the author. She is so good – ie impossible to make fun of – that she ends up being the only boring person in the story. This is an An America-wide problem for art makers and I don’t expect Sarah Rule to solve the problem. But from over, here its glaringly obvious. August Osage County is also artistically compromised by the need to genuflect to ‘racial awareness issues’ – slipping to ‘ideologically sound’ positions only when creating the non-white characters. In that case the American Indian maid is also so holier than thou that she ends up being utterly feeble and the message she is meant to carry is without impact.

I don’t have a problem with the fact that many people will love this play and the production. I write here to remind readers that alternative views, especially when well considered and from the heart, are helpful and to be embraced. These are the reviews that do most to help us enlarge our views on art and its relations with the world.