Norm and Ahmed and Shafana and Aunt Sarrinah: Downstairs Theatre
On a Sydney street, late at night, Norm sits on a bench, waiting. He’s in his fifties, maybe sixties, balding, goateed, with a beer gut. He’s wearing an Australian flag T-shirt under a leather waistcoat. There’s a construction site behind him. Faded signs warn of danger, advise caution. Like the T-shirt, really.
He lights a cigarette, takes a few puffs, then quickly stamps it out. A young Pakistani university student passes by, on his way home from his night job. Norm asks him for a light. Ahmed is nervous, and so are we. But appearances can be deceiving: Norm is loud, provocative, but for the most part friendly. Appearances can be deceiving.
In reviewing the New Theatre production of Insomnia and Midnight and Victor and Sass last month, I had a bit of a rave about how much I like double bills. With that in mind, you might expect me to say how much I enjoyed this one, until I go and write a line like ‘you might expect me to say,’ which may now have you expecting the opposite…
That’s what it’s like talking to Norm: every line turns in on itself. And the experience of watching Norm and Ahmed, written by Alex Buzo, banned in three Australian states in the 1960s, feels very much as if Norm is talking directly to us. It’s confronting. That’s not why it was banned, but actually the play’s history, for me, gets in the way a bit, ‘spoils’ it (certainly its ending). And really, this funny, frightening piece of theatre deserves to be taken on its own, considerable merits.
Or at least as part of a double bill with Alana Valentine’s Shafana and Aunt Sarrinah. Commissioned by Emma Buzo, founder and director of The Alex Buzo Company, as a contemporary response to Norm, the second half of the bill concerns another young university student, Shafana, an Australian-Afghani who has resolved to start wearing the hijab, the headscarf that symbolises her faith. Aunt Sarrinah, whom she loves like a mother, who loves her like a daughter, objects, passionately. This surprised me. Indeed, as an insight into the lives of Muslims in this country, Shafana and Aunt Sarrinah is nothing if not an eye-opening, mind-opening experience. In dialogue with Buzo, it more than holds its own, and its equally surprising ending is deeply moving.
This dialogue does serve to highlight each play’s flaws, however. Norm and Ahmed is better able to balance its humorous and dramatic elements, for example, whereas Shafana and Aunt Sarrinah is more one, then the other. Both are also somewhat uneven in their treatment of their characters: while Craig Meneaud as Ahmed and Sheridan Harbridge as Shafana are very strong in their respective roles, Laurence Coy’s Norm and Camilla Ah Kin’s Aunt Sarrinah steal each play in turn, in part because they both give captivating performances, but also because they get the bulk of the best lines, their characters being more sophisticated, more fleshed out on the page.
Designer Deirdre Burges is also something of a scene stealer here (which is not to suggest that she, too, lurks around construction sites at night to source her materials). Her set for Shafana and Aunt Sarrinah, which shifts seamlessly from a laboratory to Sarrinah’s kitchen, is particularly inspired. Its coloured glass bottles – for spices, specimens – are a truly brilliant touch.
As a soon-to-be HSC text, Norm and Ahmed is about to become required reading. Maybe it always was? I won’t say that both it and Shafana and Aunt Sarrinah are required viewing, which would be far too presumptuous. No, I won’t say that – only that you’ll be poorer if you miss them.
Norm and Ahmed and Shafana and Aunt Sarrinah: Downstairs Theatre
Venue: Downstairs Theatre, Seymour Centre, corner of City Road and Cleveland Street, Chippendale
Date: 6 to 29 August 2009
Times:Tuesday-Saturday 8pm
Saturday Matinee 2pm
Tickets: Adult $38 ($32 for previews)
Concession $27
