By Darby Turnbull
Whenever I consume a piece of culture or media, I often find myself grumbling at the ways the material has the characters engage with money, or rather not engage with money. Rarely do I see a play that shows some insight or integrity into the realities of working-class life especially in one of our major theatres. Gary Owen’s Romeo and Julie made its debut at London’s National Theatre last year after the huge success of Iphigenia in Splott, also a hit at Red Stitch and returning later this year. Both recontextualise classic texts into modern-day, working-class Wales. It’s a genius concept, putting the banalities of poverty and low-income existence in arch conversation, even if it’s just the titles, of works that have the more elite connotations of classical theatre.
With Romeo and Julie Owens discusses his aim to write a romantic comedy/kitchen sink drama and the text certainly engages with those tropes, especially early on. Romeo is 18, unemployed and a single father to his infant daughter living with his alcoholic mother, has a meet cute with Julie, daughter of a steel worker and home care worker but attends private school and is on the path to study physics at Cambridge. Their attraction to each other and ultimate relationship attempts to provide a prism into the harsh necessity of thoroughly considering the long-term impacts of your choices when you don’t have a safety net to bail you out. Julie, despite being working class herself is something of a tourist into the world of real poverty.
Iphigenia in Splott is a one-woman solo piece and perhaps that’s a form Owen’s is more comfortable in because to my ear, he struggles with the five characters that appear in this play. Besides Romeo and Julie, their parents, Barb (Romeo’s mother), Col (Julie’s father) and Kath (Julie’s stepmother) make functional appearances that often struggle to make an emotional impact given the limited dimensions of the writing, and it saddens me to say this production.
Kamarra Bell Wykes’ decision to have the cast play the piece in neutral Australian accents is the first misstep; there are many instances where this would be a fine, even innovative choice, but this play is so painstakingly specific to Wales. The program states that Owen was consulted about the possibility of adapting his text to an Australian setting and was open but ultimately the creative team elected not to. I see that Bell Wykes has mostly worked in devised theatre and this is one of her first forays into more naturalistic drama. I’m very keen to see her future work but her staging at Red Stitch felt awkward and staid without room for the emotions to emerge organically.
It’s here that I’ll modestly assert my own ‘working class credentials’, in addition to being raised by a single parent (with help from other family members), grew up in government housing and currently working in public health. I bring this up, because I’m estimating I may have a little more lived experience of the world depicted in this play than many other audience members and has undoubtedly filtered my engagement with it.
There was much about this play and the production that felt off key for me, which may have mostly been the accent and dialect changes and my experience of class is very obviously unique and I conscious of projecting, but I felt actively resistant to this production and the dramaturgy, which I’ll attempt to unpack through my interpretation of the various creative choices.
All the characters and plot beats have potential, but there’s an internal lethargy that leads, to my eye, to some clumsy developments.
The character of Barb for example seems to exist as a cautionary example, an alcoholic worn down by poverty and raising multiple children; she’s flaky, bitter and deeply cynical. It’s a relatable tragedy but she’s mainly just there to offer a cold, caustic reminder of just how bad things can go. Belinda McClory, who I usually can’t praise high enough for the detail and fullness of her characterizations still seems to be figuring Barb out. Her intelligence as a performer is on full display and she’s at her best when she shows Barb’s more calculated, caustic side but I was less convinced by her cruelty, callousness especially her drunken mood swings. It doesn’t help that Barb disappears from the play halfway through Act 2 so her narrative thread feels loose.
Claudia Greenstone as Kath is served a little better as the tough, weary care worker with little time for the impetuousness of the youths. A late highlight is a pointed monologue about the class divisions in care work, the limited access for the needy and how it falls on the shoulders of the underappreciated and underpaid workers to give more to the most vulnerable while the ones that pay their salaries enjoy the profits. Justin Hosking’s Col also suffers from a lack of character development but does well with the manic zeal with which Col pursues his daughter’s success at the cost of his own health and clarity into the kind of person she’s growing into. There’s a chilling moment when he calls her ‘soft’ and takes care to remind her of how hard he’s worked to make sure she hasn’t been exposed to the harsher realities of life. There’s a neat undercurrent in Col and Kath’s story in that despite their commitment to Julie’s social and academic advancement they also slightly resent how much it’s costing them.
The key to any love story and the margin for which I engage with it is whether I believe in the central couple’s chemistry and its ability to shake up the alchemy of their worldviews, life trajectories and desires. Does their connection have the ability to help them grow or destroy them? I just didn’t believe this one.
I do believe there’s a nugget in Owen’s text that Romeo and Julie are at a point in their lives where they need the catharsis of a passionate, potentially destructive relationship but I didn’t buy that these two would give each other the time of day much less upend their lives for each other.
Shontane Farmer as Julie does well as a young woman with the security and ego of someone used to constant praise and validation and the naive certainty that all her solutions are the right ones. I would have liked to have seen more of Julie’s own class anxieties that emerge as she’s faced with the possibility of moving into a different social sphere than the one she knows. However, Owen makes Julie so sheltered that some of her interactions beggar belief, two key moments involve her condescending to Romeo in a way that is supposed to be charming; offering to make helping him with childcare a ‘community project’ and teaching him to read leading to their first sexual encounter. Really? Farmer doesn’t quite give us something more to grasp onto but really allows us to feel the frustration at Julie’s pigheaded self-destructiveness.
Damon Baudin’s Romeo was a little too clean cut and dense, but that’s also the script. There’s a sweetness and vulnerable openness to him however I needed more desperation, fatigue, fear, rage. Romeo’s situation is terrifying; he can’t even afford to replace nappies or wet wipes when they run out but the love he feels for his daughter prevents him from putting her into the care of the state. A more cynical reading of his motivations for pursuing a relationship with Julie, consciously or un are the possibilities of respite being with her offers. Sex, companionship or even just someone else to change nappies, or watch the baby so he can have a nap.
Sophie Woodward’s set evokes the dour barrenness of the characters’ lives with some efficient use of the walls closing in and out to show how space indicates class disparities. The final image of the walls literally encompassing Romeo was on the nose but tonally consistent with the text’s exploration of how some lucky few have the opportunity for something more but many are trapped by their lack of options. However, the set changes are laborious, and the music saps the transitions and scenes of energy and tension.
It’s no secret that for decades now, working class and lower income creatives have been pushed out of the arts, opportunities are limited and visions for inclusion are often distorted. When a working class story does break through it feels tokenistic or an educational experience for the individuals with the access, motivation, time and energy to attend. Sadly, this was my experience with this production. As more and more people begin to feel the strain and trauma of the cost of living it’s essential that artists have the platform to interrogate and explore the systems that uphold inequality and poverty. I hope we start getting plays like this one that explore the nuances of living in Australia under NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme), DSP (Disability Support Pension), the Robodebt scandal, gig economy to name a few.
Image: Jodie Hutchinson
