Their shows are clever, rude and funny, stropped-razor sharp as they smash clichés and expose the hypocrisy of convention and social niceties. Melbourne faces ached from laughing at The Sovereign Wife at the MTC earlier this year and this new one is just as funny: Summertime in the Garden of Eden doesn’t poke a stick at the traditions of the antebellum deep south, it attacks them with a battering ram. The result is a performance exploding with the Sisters’ usual hilarity and undercut by some harsh truths. Writers Declan Green and Ash Flanders wring out the steaminess and oppression of Gone With the Wind and the aesthetics and elevated language of Tennessee Williams to create a show dripping in high comedy and camp.
It’s funny even before anyone begins to speak. The set has you smiling instantly with macrame hangers and plastic flowers swinging gently over a floor strewn with cotton wool. Actor Agent Cleave, playing newly engaged Daisy Mae, with a flick of a fan and a simper emerges swan-like from a froth of white. Big Daddy (Bessie Holland), patriarch of the Fairweather plantation, is excited by the return of Daisy Mae’s sister Honey Sue (Olympia Bukkakis) who has been mysteriously absent these past ten years. Plot points pile madly upon more plot points and everyone is hiding something.
Genevieve Giuffre steals the stage as black housekeeper Mammie, outrageously miming with a gollywog doll to present her character. You can’t help wondering what they’d make of this in the US. Giuffre is commanding on stage, a huge presence and she has a lovely singing voice. The actors are all terrific comic performers; it was a lot of fun on opening night watching them trying not to crack up. The cast also includes Peter Paltos as Daisy Mae’s fiancé, a returned confederate soldier who, like the ‘girls’, turns out to be someone other than he first appears. There are many crazy moments, tossing about of furniture in the set changes, leaf blowing, scene changes referring to ‘the drawing room, which is where we are now,’ and there are some excellent deaths in the finale. Supremely subversive fabulousness.
4 Stars
By Sisters Grimm
Directed by Declan Green
Performers: Olympia Bukkakis, Agent Cleave, Genevieve Giuffre, Bessie Holland, Peter Paltos
