Adelaide Theatre<\/p>\n
Maggie Stone
\nby Caleb Lewis
\nState Theatre Company
\nSpace Theatre
\nAdelaide Festival Centre.
\nNovember 12. Tickets $ 25 – $ 65
\nBookings: BASS 131 246, bass.net.au
\nUntil November 30 .
\nDuration : 100 minutes, no interval.<\/p>\n
It was Polonius, in Hamlet<\/i> who said : \u201cNeither a borrower or a lender be\/ For loan oft loses both itself and friend.\u201d He\u2019s right, but that\u2019s not how we live in the world. In his astutely incisive, often bitterly funny, new work, Maggie Stone<\/i>, playwright Caleb Lewis asks : \u201cHow do borrowing and lending affect our relationships with others ?\u201d And he doesn\u2019t just mean financial transactions, but the effect of emotional debts; the price of magnanimity and the cost of being beholden.<\/p>\n
Maggie Stone is a loans officer in a bank and she is well-named. Both she and her computer like to say no, especially to Sudanese refugees like Prosper Deng who has got himself in a chain of debt that he can\u2019t get out of. Stone\u2019s white Australian prejudices and her casual racism are jarringly apparent, but when, by coincidence, Deng\u2019s wife also comes to request a loan, Stone realises she is part of a chain of social and financial catastrophes and obligations she can\u2019t resist.<\/p>\n
Director Geordie Brookman keeps the episodic narrative brisk, further propelled by sound designer, Andrew Howard\u2019s urgent electronic fanfares. Victoria Lamb\u2019s imposing mesh-like wood frame d\u00e9cor abstractly denotes the thorny complexity of the issues faced; as Maggie says at one point: \u201cYou can\u2019t fix this with a working bee.\u201d<\/p>\n
The performances are excellent. Liberian\u2013born actor Shedrick Yarkpai as Prosper Deng brings gravity to the opening scene and, doubling as the confused teenage son Benny, memorably depicts the turbulence experienced by young traumatized refugees in Australian society. Ansuya Nathan, as the Syrian shopkeeper, Mahira Sadat, reflects different vexations for enterprising immigrants eager to make a new start. Some of Lewis\u2019s characters are more satirically drawn \u2013 Mark Saturno as Leo Hermes, the loan shark is an identikit Chopper Read, and Genevieve Mooy brings deft comic precision as Georgina Spack, the well-meaning but clueless friend, blithely looking to fill, and smooth over, cracks that are really chasms.<\/p>\n
But at the centre of the production\u2019s success are the two leads. Sara Zwangobani is outstanding as Amath Deng, the resourceful and resolute widow and mother, who is Lewis\u2019s articulate focus for his theme of enforced dependency and the price of gratitude. So too is Kris McQuade, as the case-hardened, unreflective, un-nurtured Maggie. Like Zwangobani, McQuade\u2019s fine performance personalizes, and gives an earthy directness, to the play\u2019s ambitions.<\/p>\n
With Caleb Lewis\u2019s inventive, accessible new work, State Theatre, under new management from Geordie and Rob Brookman, concludes a strong season on a high note.<\/p>\n
Murray Bramwell<\/p>\n
\u201cBitterly funny refuge in financial dependency\u201d The Australian, November 14, 2013, p.14.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Adelaide Theatre Maggie Stone by Caleb Lewis State Theatre Company Space Theatre Adelaide Festival Centre. November 12. Tickets $ 25 – $ 65 Bookings: BASS 131 246, bass.net.au Until November 30 . Duration : 100 minutes, no interval. It was Polonius, in Hamlet who said : \u201cNeither a borrower or a lender be\/ For loan oft loses both itself and friend.\u201d He\u2019s right, but that\u2019s not how we live in the world. In his astutely incisive, often bitterly funny, new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,5,16,14,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-24","category-archive","category-australian-texts","category-state-theatre-company","category-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2367"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2369,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2367\/revisions\/2369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}