Sydney theatre-makers have been fascinated by live video of late. There was Eamon Flack’s take on The Glass Menagerie for Belvoir in 2014, and Benedict Andrews’ The Maids at Sydney Theatre Company in 2013. In fact, on-stage cameras are one of Andrews’ favoured techniques – he used them in Belvoir’s Measure for Measure in 2010 and STC’s The Season at Sarsaparilla in 2007.
Some productions have employed them masterfully, in some they are an irritating distraction. But director Kip Williams has used them to great effect in STC’s new production of Suddenly Last Summer.
It helps that there’s a reference point. Tennessee Williams’s 1958 one-act play was famously adapted into a 1959 film starring Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn and Montgomery Clift, and this STC production draws on camera techniques such as intense close-ups, zooming and tracking. But the director skillfully contrasts the live cameras with compelling onstage action to lend the production a voyeuristic and eerie, dreamlike quality.
Suddenly Last Summer tells of the deeply traumatised Catherine, who under instruction by her wealthy aunt Mrs Venable, is to be assessed as a candidate for lobotomy by Doctor Cukrowicz. Catherine witnessed the death of her poet cousin Sebastian in the Spanish town of Cabeza de Lobo and, despite her family’s demands, will not be quiet about the controversial circumstances.
Like many of the Williams’ works, it’s a deeply personal play drawing on the playwright’s feelings about his younger sister’s lobotomy, his mother’s domineering character and his own struggles with his sexuality. Yet the enduring fascination of his plays lies in the universal quality of the issues he explores, including mental illness and the fall-out of family conflict.
The opening-night audience is filled with artistic and political heavy hitters who have undoubtedly turned out to see headliner Robyn Nevin in action. And she is on terrifying form as Mrs Venable, who will stop at nothing to preserve her carefully curated image of her dead son.
The doctor is played by Mark Leonard Winter, an outsider drawn into terrible family secrets, and the company is rounded out with a top-notch supporting cast including Paula Arundell as the nun employed to keep Catherine safe, Melita Jurisic as the devoted Miss Foxhill and Susan Prior and Brandon McClelland as Catherine’s grasping mother and brother.
Yet the show truly belongs to Eryn Jean Norvill as Catherine, a woman deeply traumatised first by a rape and later by witnessing her cousin’s dreadful fate. With her painted, doll-like features, Norvill succeeds in turning what could easily be a histrionic part into one that’s deeply sympathetic.
The always innovative designer Alice Babidge employs a rotating stage to set the lush, surreal hothouse of the dead poet’s garden against the blank, scorching heat of external scenes, while composer Stefan Gregory’s relentless score heightens the tension of the piece. Between the first-class cast, thoughtful direction and skilful stagecraft, it all comes together seamlessly for an intense and electrifying evening.
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Suddenly Last Summer, Drama theatre, Sydney Opera House, until 21 March
