July 2, 2006
Murray Bramwell

Two Weeks with the Queen
Adapted by Mary Morris
from the novel by Morris Gleitzman.
Windmill Performing Arts
In association with State Theatre Company of South Australia.

Dunstan Playhouse
Adelaide Festival Centre.
July 1. Tickets $ 19 – 27. Bookings BASS 131 246
Until July 15.
Riverside Theatre, Sydney
July 19 – 22.

For their school holiday season Windmill Productions have revived a favourite from the recent past. Two Weeks with the Queen – Mary Morris’s adaptation of Morris Gleitzman’s rambunctious story of a boy who leaves his family, and his cancer stricken brother, to go to London to Find Answers – is back. As is director Wayne Harrison, returning to a play he first produced in 1992. With its raucous republicanism, its portrait of English repression, and its focus on the emerging tragedy of AIDS, the play has a distinctly pre-Millennial eye. But there are also more central concerns about childhood itself. What do kids understand about death and dying ? And what can – or should – adults do to protect them from the sadness and unfairness of the world ?

Mark Thompson’s nicely vibrant set consists of homely formica furniture against a backdrop of folded-out panels, all concealing doors and sliding exits and jauntily decorated with childlike, broad brush sketches of Sydney Harbor, Buckingham Palace, the London Eye and the SCG. Nigel Levings’s lighting brings a buttery glow to the heartfelt efforts of our twelve year old hero, Colin Mudford, as he tries to find a cure for his brother, Luke. First, he tries to petition the Queen, then, a doctor at a London hospital. Eventually he meets a young Welshman, Ted, and his terminally ill partner, Griff, and learns about the sort of courage that has to do with simply being steadfast.

With more than thirty roles to get through, the cast of seven is like a shoebox full of grasshoppers and Harrison generates many enjoyable high-jinks in the cartoonish depictions of everything from QANTAS aircrews to English family life. Some of the stereotypes are over-worked and wear thin, but Kristian Schmid’s hyperkinetic turn as the gormless English cousin, Alistair, is a definite crowd pleaser, Nick Pelomis is convincing as Ted, Mark Owen-Taylor, as Dad and Bob, plays two differently bewildered fathers, and Matthew Robinson, with keyboard and kazoo, provides linking musical narrative.

Steadying the sometimes arduous plotting and off-setting the limited characterizations, however, is Xavier Samuel’s intelligent performance as Colin. He never resorts to the clichés of the juvenile role, even when required to wear a back-to-front baseball hat. Samuel, who graduated from Flinders University’s Drama Centre only last year, has already appeared in Two Thirty 7, Murali K. Thalluri’s entry in this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and attracted interest from major theatre companies. His relaxed stage presence, his resistance to sentimentality, and the likeable assurance of his delivery all suggest that he has a bright future.

The Australian, July 3, 2006.