Bombshells. Photo courtesy of Productions Theatre Company Facebook Page Credit- Lee Schmidt Creative Photography
is now showing the heart-warming and funny
Bombshells in the middle of Milton. Just off Coronation Drive, surrounded by stylish restaurants, you can enjoy dinner and a show.
Bombshells features six female characters describing their daily existence alone on stage through monologue. If Shakespeare once wrote about the seven ages of man, here we see clearly six ages represented by the women in question. The teenager, the bride, the mum, the career woman, the divorcee and the widow. The fact that almost all of these women have had their life's trajectory affected by a man maybe says something but here in this text, the characters go deeper about what they really feel. Sharing confidences they wouldn't share with maybe friends or family and certainly not men. Sometimes it makes for some heartbreaking scenes and sometimes some cheeky laughs, the audience in attendance on Saturday night seemed to laugh not just with delight but also recognition.
There are only three performers in the show playing two characters each, of which almost none are the same age as the actor. This gave the show a certain depth, at heart, there always remains a blushing bride, an excited teenager or a sensual creature beneath our skin no matter how many wrinkles appear now. A neat repeating motif to is how each woman applies lipstick in their monologue.
The cast is first-rate, with Julie Berry conveying the weight of motherhood with monologues that seem so dense and non-stop that it impresses that she never misses a beat and keeps her rhythm throughout. Later she lets loose as a divorced performer on stage (in a stunning sequined outfit from costume designer Marg Oliver) reckoning with alcoholism and possibly faded stardom.
Libby Harrison plays two characters different in nature and at starkly different points of a marriage but with the same sly comedic bent and sense of pathos in her performance. Both are played for laughs unashamedly which delighted the audience no end.
Alexis Beebe, who reminds me a little of Robin Williams, may have proved the most interesting. Her first character, teenager Mary, is loud and full of life preparing for a talent show and performing the routine to great applause. Yet later, as the Widow Winsome, she held the audience's attention in full by doing so little and her monologue may have been the highlight of the show. Sometimes her movements were a bit too sprightly for someone older but isn't that maybe the point? Beebe is lively because Winsome is feeling life seeping back into her.
Purpose in Performance (Pip) Theatre aims to support social change through its productions and
Bombshells, written by Joanna Murray-Smith and directed by Debbie Taylor, is an appropriate show for their cause telling women's stories through their perspective. Businesswoman Diedre Grace has set up
Pip Theatre on the site of the famed
Dome Dance Bar of the 90s as a not-for-profit charity providing paid opportunities for local creatives.
If
Bombshells is any indication, there is a lot more to look forward to from
Pip Theatre.
Bombshells had its preview night January 27th, and concludes with performances this Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, February 1-4.
