Andrea James' interpretation of the career of Evonne Goolagong, from her youth in a small country town to touring the world as a wildly successful tennis player, is visiting Queanbeyan towards the tag end of a yearlong tour that's seen it play everywhere from Adelaide to Brisbane (with a run at the Melbourne Theatre Company yet to come). Using a cast of five to tell the story (one actress playing Goolagong, everybody else playing multiple roles, from family to mentors to rivals), it plays out on an apparently simple set (designed by Romanie Harper, it's laid out like a tennis court with net, umpires chair and benches surrounding the stage, performing multiple duties with the assistance of the beautiful projections of Mic Gruchy). It's a beautiful production celebrating one of our most skilled athletes and is absolutely worth watching - it's charming, expertly summarising a long career into a 90-odd minute runtime, and contains great evocative choreography from Vicki Van Hout and Katina Olsen stylising the tennis matches into pieces that grab the eye.
It also left me feeling a little disconnected - as a biography, it's definitely at the "respectful" end of the spectrum, which means that James has elected not to get particularly intrusive into Goolagong's feelings and motivations beyond what's clearly visible. And while I respect that's a good and generous impulse, it does mean that I did miss much of a sense of Goolagong's inner life - she does come across as almost an enthusiastic bystander to her own life, curiously detached. And while there's something to be said for that - the alienating way that fame and the media feels like it's creating a public figure who isn't quite you - the overall effect is that, though Goolagong is presented as narrating the story throughout, I don't emerge feeling like I know her more than I did when I entered the theatre. James stages a great play but she's written a somewhat distanced one - though it brings up all kinds of intriguing angles (the flat-out racist and sexist media coverage of much of her career, the distancing effect that her career has on her family, the exploitative nature of her mentor and coach), in the desire not to be exploitative it feels, instead, a little underwritten.
I do recommend seeing this - Ella Ferris as Goolagong gives a bright, charming performance as Goolagong, and the support work by Jax Compton, Lincoln Elliot, Katina Olson and Sermsah Bin Saad is funny, beautiful, emotional and generous. As a demonstration of theatrical and choreographic skill, it's astonishingly good work. I just wish the writing hit me harder.
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