(Left to right): Kijiana Pene, Shae Trownson, Suzy Adair, Kaila LeMaitre and Maddy Klever are a well-matched cast, all bringing incredible emotional energy to the play.
Ilona Hanne reviews The Revlon Girl at Inglewood’s TET Cue Theatre, running from now to March 23.
I will admit to not wanting to go to this show. Based on a true event - the Aberfan Disaster of 1966 (in which 144 people were killed; 116 of them children) - I knew it was going to make me cry. What I didn’t expect, however, was how much I would also laugh, nor did I expect to leave the theatre feeling as uplifted as I did.
The play opens with a large projector screen on stage. As the audience lights go down, a short film plays, with the sounds of children’s laughter and a school bell helping build the picture we see on screen. Happy children settling in for a day of learning. Then we hear the rumble, and see the landslide of coal waste rushing towards the school. It was always going to be a haunting scene, and with the recent footage we have seen here in Aotearoa New Zealand of all the silt and mudslides caused by Cyclone Gabrielle, it was perhaps even more haunting than directors Michelle Chainey and Sharren Read had planned.
As the horror of the incident sinks in, the action begins on stage, with Maddy Klever’s nervous but well-meaning and kind-hearted Sian setting up space in a room above the local pub, ready for the arrival of the Revlon Girl. Maddy has excellent comic timing, with her facial expressions and answers to the offstage Jackie (Nicola Knight) as she deals with a leaking skylight a great way to relax the audience into laughing after such an emotional start.
Sian has arranged for herself and some of the other grieving mothers from Aberfan to have a makeup demonstration, but is worried others will judge them for doing something so vain after losing their children. So worried, in fact, she plans to tell anyone who asks that the Revlon Girl is actually a visitor from the Red Cross of the Women’s Institute.
This feeling of being trapped in grief and society’s rules and expectations around grief and motherhood form the very heart of this play, and each of the actors bring plenty of emotion and thought to their character portrayals.
While Sian worries about how she should be seen to grieve, Rona (Suzy Adair) brings a different stage of grief to the play. Her raging anger at everyone and everything is demonstrated not just in her words, but also her movement and posture throughout. A talented actress, Suzy doesn’t let the scripted words (many of them swear words) do all the talking for her character, instead bringing a fantastic physicality to the role.
All of the actors are well-versed in the nuance of physicality and posture on stage, with Shae Trownson’s bereft and mentally struggling Marilyn absolutely heartbreaking to watch at times. Marilyn is convinced there were signs they missed, forewarnings of the disaster, and is now stuck in a world of rituals and superstition as she deals with the loss of her two girls. As she wrings her hands and hunches her body, seemingly trying to take up as little space as possible, Shae delivers an outstanding performance throughout.
While Marilyn has turned to superstition and mediums to get through her grief, the vicar’s wife Jean (Kijiana Pene) has turned to God. Heavily pregnant (and kudos to Kijiana for so authentically portraying this - it’s about so much more than a prosthetic bump), she mourns the loss of her “brilliant” son, while seeming to resent both the child she is carrying and her surviving eight-year-old daughter - neither of whom will ever measure up to the son she has lost. At first she is an unlikable character, her contempt for her daughter making the audience feel uncomfortable, and her clear judging of how others grieve sets her apart. Perhaps that is why it is her monologue that was the first to make my eyes leak. It’s as she finally breaks down and gives voice to her loss that Kijiana skilfully captures the audience’s heartstrings, with more than one audience member looking wistfully at the large box of tissues on stage.
Dealing with all this grief, sadness, anger and rawness is the Revlon Girl - Charlotte - herself, expertly brought to life by Kaila MeMaitre. As she recites her advertising jingles in an almost prayerful manner, she creates a beautiful juxtaposition between her world and the one the four women in the room with her are experiencing. Only, things are never as they seem, and Kaila does a fantastic job of switching emotional levels as Charlotte shares her own experience with grief with the women.
With such a strong cast, it could be argued the lighting team had very little to do - with each actor claiming her own moment in the spotlight throughout the play, with no external lighting required for each to shine. However, Cue Theatre’s sound, lighting and props teams were as excellent as always, delivering a convincing set that brought the audience right into that empty, leaking room above the pub. The wardrobe and makeup team had clearly done their research, with a fantastic array of decade-appropriate looks, each suited to the individual character.
From the opening heartbreaking scenes on the projector to the final tears and laughter of the night, this play will take you on an incredible emotional rollercoaster thanks to a talented cast and thoughtful direction. However, you will leave feeling uplifted in a way you might not expect from such a tough topic. Go, get your tickets to the play, and treat yourself to a night of excellent local theatre.