March 3 , 2013
Adelaide Festival
Theatre

Thursday
by Bryony Lavery
Brink Productions
and the English Touring Theatre
Norwood Town Hall, The Parade, Norwood
February 28. Tickets $ 30 – $ 59
Bookings : BASS 131 246 or adelaidefestival.com.au
Until March 16.

“This is a play, not a documentary,” Bryony Lavery writes in the program notes for Thursday, “ It is a theatrical response and offering to an enormous human event.” The event was on Thursday,  July 7, 2005 – the day that four bombs were exploded in inner London, killing 56 people and injuring more than 700.

One of the victims on 7/7 was Dr Gill Hicks, originally from Adelaide, but resident in London. She was the last living victim rescued, she lost both legs, and was initially labeled by her rescuers only as “one unknown”. She is widely known now, for her courage and as founder of the organization, M.A.D. for Peace. Thursday she emphasises, is inspired by what happened to her, but is not a literal account.

Thursday is a day in the life of six strap-hanging commuters and the people close to them. In the extended opening scene of this premiere Adelaide Festival production, we see a range of characters readying for work –  dragging out of bed, stumbling to bathrooms, fractious with partners, thinking into the day. They bid hurried goodbyes, leaving behind dangling conversations, unfinished business, all in the routine bustle of the ordinary day.

Director Chris Drummond expertly marshalls these overlapping character threads, even though this section is overlong and, at times, over-written and confusing. The latter sections, however, especially the rescue and the  hospital are first-rate.  Dan Potra’s excellent set, splendidly lit by Colin Grenfell, creates a moveable series of pale rooms (in houses and hospitals) often shrouded with scrim as we look into the intimate lives of the characters. Through a doorway, at the back, Quentin Grant plays his looping, melodic piano, gently underscoring the action.

The performances by Australian actors from Brink, along with UK performers for the English Touring Theatre, bring Lavery’s array of citizens into sharp detail. Lena Kaur and Rochenda Sandell are the bickering girlfriends, Paul Blackwell, urban expert Lionel, Deidre Rubenstein is the widowed, bewildered Elizabeth  and Nathan O’Keefe plays Ryan in conflict between his difficult mother and fiancé, Bonita (Emma Handy). ET, the vehement young man with the back pack, is played by Tom Mothersdale and Martin Hutson is Kev, the not-really-coping boyfriend .

In the lead, Kate Mulvany is outstanding  as Rose, particularly steering the shifts in tone and perspective in the latter half of the play.

Briony Lavery’s text (which uses the device of the ‘Someone’, where actors step momentarily out of character to create an external, discontinuous narrative)  memorably captures particulars and feelings , celebrates the marvel of the city in working harmony and describes both the catastrophe and the selfless human response when it is rent by violence. She reminds us that we are all just atoms –  but we can also reconstitute and renew.  These are good reasons why Thursday is a day – and a play – to remember.

Murray Bramwell

Published in slightly abridged form on The Australian web page March 3, 2013  and in text form as “When London was hit by bombs” The Australian, March 4, 2013, p.15.