Wayside Bride, Belvoir Street Theatre, 2 Apr-29 May 2022 (in rep)

 

Alana Valentine is probably one of Australia's most performed playwrights - certainly she's one of the most programmed. Most of her work is drawn from research and interviews with people, dealing with an element of Australian life, whether it be common or specific, personal or social. She's been called in to assist with an number of plays (she's credited with three works so far this year, this solo and the libreto of the Opera "Watershed: The Death of Dr Duncan" for Adeliade Festival with Christos Tsolkias, and the script for "Wudjang: Not the Past" for Sydney Theatre company with Stephen Page), and shows a strong practical theatrical sense in telling community stories in a wider context.

"Wayside Bride" has been at least two years in the making, looking at the work of the Wayside Chapel through their performance of weddings. It's unusual in that Valentine has written herself into the play (the only other time I've noticed this appearing in her work was "Ladies Day", which revolved around whether the story being told to her was actually true or not. This time around, it's because her way into the story is to talk about how her mother had her second marriage at the Wayside (due to the Wayside having a more liberal approach to who it would marry than other church institutions in the 60s, 70s and 80s). There's a loose structure of us seeing the work through the course of a typical day, as people come in to get hitched and tell their stories, meanwhile there's an undercurent of the conservative church reaction to the Wayside's work as Ted Noffs faces the possibility of being removed as a heretic. Valentine keeps it fairly tight and not too anecdotal, though it's clear that the strongest material is where it's closest to Noffs - the individual wedding stories feel a little incidental to the main power of the work by the end. 

At this performance, Christopher Stollery was playing the role of Noffs - filling in for a covid-isolated performer, and still on book. Surprisingly he was quite effective, even handling most of his props one-handed while the other arm was wrapped around the script. Emily Goddard plays Alana, inquisitive and fully aware she's a writing device but still respectful of the rest of the cast, and brings life to something that could have felt quite clunky. Elsewhere Sacha Horler does double duty as Alana's sarcastic mum and Ted's loving wife, both right in her wheelhouse as rough and charmingly edgy characters; Rebecca Massey moves from church lady to prostitute, Marco Chiappi moves from Gay Barfly to Church Elder, Sandy Greenwood provides a good weeping bride and the rest of the company all fill in the show with differing interesting personalities.

Designing a set that fits into a repertory season can be a challenge, but Michael Hankin's bare and slightly run down church hall gives a style to the place. There's effective work throughout the cast and crew in bringing a gentle community story to life.

I was meant to see this in repertory with "Light Shining in Buckinghamshire", but unfortunately that was cancelled due to cast illness and I won't be back in Sydney to see it. It's unfortuante as this is a solid company doing strong work in this play and I'd like to see how they work in another context, but never the less, as a standalone piece this very much works as a warm look at a piece of Sydney History that isn't necessarily as widely spoken about as it should be.