The most
beautiful things happen secretly and privately.
In Helen
Garner’s novel, The Spare Room, the above wisdom comes from a German magician whose
show is playing at Melbourne’s cult cabaret and performance space, The
Butterfly Club. The scene itself is wonderfully theatrical.
The
magician asks for help from an audience member. It’s Nicola, Helen’s friend who
is staying in her spare room while she is undergoing alternative therapy
treatment for cancer. It’s one of the few scenes in the book or Eamon Flack’s
adaptation that take place outside the titular room or in various venues for
health and healing. Nicola’s cancer is terminal. Seeing a magic show only offers
brief respite.
There are
many ways to make a thing disappear, the magician tells her. Explicating the
themes of the novel in a heavy-handed way that indie theatre can do from time
to time. It feels right.
Centred on
the friendship and the increasingly fraught relationship between Hel and
Nicola, as Nicola’s treatments wear them both down, The Spare Room is an
hilarious play with deeply affecting underpinnings. This is not just a
tug-of-war between two women who have different ideas of how to approach illness
and death, this is a profound exploration of the weight of caregiving and the
thankless task it can be.
Helen, as
played by the extraordinary Judy Davis, is a force to be reckoned with. The
play opens with her sitting alone in her apartment, staring off, ready for
Nicola – and waiting for the show to begin. The audience are welcomed into the
spare room, the bed turned the right way for positive energy flow, one of a dozen
sets of pink sheets on the mattress that will be changed again and again
throughout the play.
Flack uses
large chunks of Garner’s text; the first-person narrative in the book is
perfectly suited for the character to monologue. We’re here to experience what
Helen is going through, moreso than Nicola. She doesn’t understand the choice
to pivot away from Western medicine. She doesn’t trust the treatments the
so-called doctors are putting Nicola through: hooked up to IV bags of vitamin C
and boxed in for ozone treatments. She isn’t sure she’s the right friend to be
burdened by Nicola’s final weeks or days or whatever it turns out to be.
Elizabeth
Alexander’s Nicola is the perfect foil for Helen, who is righteous in her beliefs. Alexander shifts from gregarious old woman to a person wracked
with illness at a turn of her head and a tilt of her body. From day to night,
Nicola can be full of life or doubled-over in pain. Even if we question her
methods for treating cancer, we can perfectly understand her drive to live.
The rest of
the ensemble play a number of characters each. Alan Dukes is all manner of healthcare-givers
– from backroom grifters to the best surgeon in the country, as well as the magician
who has a few tricks up his sleeve. In every case, his characters are fully
confident of their abilities. His parade of arrogant men is an astonishing
collection of performances.
Hannah
Waterman has a lot of fun with her roles, most notably as a fellow patient and
later as Helen’s forthright sister. Emma Diaz’s work is top notch, too,
creating such wildly different characters throughout the show I wasn’t always
sure it was her.
On
stage throughout the show is musician Anthea Cottee, playing Steve Francis’ spare but
affecting score on the cello. Mel Page’s design is clever in its adaptability. A
curtain that you’d see in a hospital. Chairs that would be at home in a waiting
room. A drinks trolley that is actually for a nurse to drag around a
hospital on rounds. It’s all practical and slyly funny.
The bed is
always there, standing sentinel, a reminder of why Nicola’s here. And there’s a
chair in the corner; sometimes for Nicola’s treatments and sometimes for Helen
to watch everything that’s happening.
Early on in
the play, Nicola calls out Helen for doing things – like offering her spare
room – so she can write something new in her diary. Helen Garner has published
numerous volumes of her own diaries, so it’s an affectionate dig at the
novelist but also insight into a character who is often so fully in their head,
they can’t always appreciate what others are going through.
Flack
speaks of Helen Garner as being Australia’s greatest living writer. His adaptation
honours her work, while also being an incredibly skilful, moving piece of
theatre.
Judy Davis –
one of Australia’s greatest living actors – is perfectly cast. It is thrilling
to see her work up-close and in a part that is big without ever feeling showy. The
character of Helen is brutally honest at times and Davis helps us to understand
her hurt as much as Nicola’s suffering.
The
Spare Room is deceptively
simple, really. No surprise there is conflict between two friends who come at a
problem from different directions. What’s refreshing is that it doesn’t shy
away from the pain both characters feel in a hopeless situation. And it doesn’t judge them when they lash out in each
other’s most vulnerable moments.
This is a
remarkable work of theatre-making. I would love to see it again. I hope this
Melbourne story finds its way here very soon.
The Spare Room is playing at Belvoir until July 18. After the season extended, it is already sold out.
Photos: Brett Boardman
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