a heartfelt Christmas tale in which comedy and crisis collide
- Written by: Leah Mercer, Associate Professor of Theatre Arts, Curtin University
Following a year in the life of an “ordinary” woman, Carol, Andrea Gibbs’ second play for Black Swan State Theatre Company is a real original.
Moving between moments in front of the curtain and scenes behind the proscenium, the play works as a series of vignettes. Interspersed throughout are live musical interludes – most of them original compositions – with musical director Jackson Harper Griggs on keyboard.
The result has a knockabout, variety-show quality that becomes more pronounced as the audience warms up, eventually applauding each episode as if it were a standalone act: think vaudeville with a throughline.
Balancing humour and heaviness
Carol balances light-hearted escapism with heavier issues, including the death of a spouse, and topical subjects such as the housing crisis, which is particularly pressing in Western Australia. As Gibbs notes in the program, “Women over 55 are the fastest-growing group of people without secure housing in Australia.”
Yet even these serious moments are consistently undercut with jokes. This balancing act is made possible by the light touch of director Adam Mitchell, who keeps the action moving and the laughs coming.
Jumping from last Christmas to this one, Carol hinges on the disconcerting reality of how much life can change in a moment, as well as a year – but also how change brings the possibility of a previously unimagined new chapter.
Cramming in every possible Aussie Christmas tradition, Gibbs has a lot of fun – and so does the audience – as Carol starts to carve out a new path of her own making.
Who is Carol?
There’s something out of time about Carol. She’s the sort of woman things happen to. Made for a time when husbands filled their wives’ cars with petrol every Sunday night and “took care” of the finances so they never had to worry about the bills, she did everything she was meant to do as a wife and mother.
Sally-Anne Upton is perfectly cast in the titular role. Her performance is the central beating heart of the piece. She moves seamlessly between the play’s broad comic appeal and more nuanced moments that dig beneath the surface of who Carol is set up to be: “a good person, a good mum and a good wife”.
In these moments – when “the advanced art of holding your tongue” begins to fail and her persona starts to crack – we see flickers of rage beneath her constant knee-jerk refrain: “I’m fine!”
These flashes, and the image of a woman who has lived her life looking in from the outside, who has trained everyone not to see her, are poignantly written and performed.
A range of instantly-recognisable characters
Mark Storen’s “very Aussie Santa” is also a standout: an all-singing, sometimes-dancing, cheeky, ocker narrator.
Reminiscent of the omniscient guardian angel in It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), he is a Christmas cracker full of one-liners that sit on a spectrum of witty to cringey – which is sort of the point.
On the lookout for the naughty and the nice of Christmas, his direct relationship with the audience draws them into the bigger world of the play, but mostly just lifts their spirits whenever he comes onstage. Storen is obviously having a good time, and so the audience does too.
The world of the play is filled out with scenes from home life, a grief group and various other locations and scenarios, where the rest of the hardworking ensemble – Bruce Denny, Isaac Diamond (doing double duty on the drums) and Ruby Henaway – play a variety of broadly realised but instantly recognisable characters.
A nice one
Designer Bruce McKinven delivers striking visual moments. The family home is evoked through stud wall frames interlocked with Carol’s old Kombi van (the only thing that was ever truly hers), with old home movies projected over the top.
When her home is snatched away – quite literally – the van remains lit from within (by lighting designer Lucy Birkinshaw), showing Carol exposed like a fish in a bowl: a small, glowing microcosm of what makes a home a home.
Carol delivers on one of the core promises of a state theatre company: showcasing the work of a (predominately) local creative team. Balancing the nostalgic and familiar and the silly and serious, it is a heartfelt, cynicism-free zone – a feel-good play about an entirely ordinary yet extraordinary woman.
Or, as Santa puts it: “one of the nice ones”.
Authors: Leah Mercer, Associate Professor of Theatre Arts, Curtin University
