The Days Are as Grass

The Days Are as Grass
By Carol Hall. RPW & Stories About Humans. Depot Theatre, Marrickville. October 19 – 20, 2016.

RPW & Stories About Humans production of Carol Hall’s The Days Are as Grass is a moving collection of vignettes about relationships and life aimed at the older generation. Beautiful direction and acting from the cast.

Eight stories as separate montages flow in to one another on stage in a ninety minute performance at The Depot Theatre, connecting the universal themes of love, marriage, friendships, memory, aging and death.

LA based producer, director and actress Jane Edwina Seymour has set Carol Hall’s play in Australia, creating a range of great roles for an ensemble of older mature actors, in a light hearted dramatic comedy. The cast of Sandra Campbell, Richard Cotter, Christine Greenough, Susan M. Kennedy, Kimball Knuckey, Sarah Plummer and Felicity Steel have created an excellent dramatic piece; reflecting poignant moments of life with humour interspersed amongst the different stories.

The production used a minimalist set, the stage painted black, using three areas of the stage for different scenes, the main focus on stage being presented in each of the different areas for each story. A large worn out sofa on a furry rug was centre stage. To the back of the stage there were two table and chair settings, and another table and chair set up to the front of the stage. The setting is present day. For ‘Last Will and Testament’, a large yellow high back lounge chair with a Moroccan table set with a decanter and glasses. In the far corner back of the stage a round table set with a red and white frilly table cloth and country style chairs.

Three empty picture frames on the stage wall, used for ‘Life Time’, a play about memory loss, signified by the use of three empty picture frames the actors were looking at and reflecting upon. To the front of the stage, to the left, a white clothed table with padded contemporary outside chairs used in the upmarket setting for the title story ‘The Days Are as Grass’, the meeting of two friends who have had ‘an affair of the mind’, rather than one of love with reference of literary quotes from books.

The first story ‘Vacation’ touches on the issue of infidelity, with a couple obsessed with gossiping about a pair of holiday makers who they suspect is having an affair. The holiday mood is set by the style of dress of the actors in flowery Hawaiian shirt and dress. Cotter and Steel are hilarious as the couple. Beautifully acted.

Next up is ‘Last Will and Testament’. Kennedy as a socialite, is reminiscent as a ‘Hyacinth’ type character, from UK television show Keeping Up Appearances, portraying an upper class woman reflecting and designating a garage sale of her ‘mementos’ for friends and loved ones. Greenough and Knuckey play a couple who have been together so long that memory loss seems to be the best thing, so they do not have to communicate in ‘Life Time’. Campbell plays a slightly worn out character with a Welsh accent in ‘The River Jordan Lamp’, a monologue where Campbell forms a friendship with a young aboriginal boy.

She enters on stage singing a delightful aboriginal song taught to her by the boy during the course of their friendship. A touching character. The most enjoyable scenes in which both Knuckey and Steel play two different couples are ‘Sensations’ and ‘The Last Word’.

In ‘Sensations’ they play a couple who have secretly saved up a stash of pills planning to die together, waiting for the pills to work, beautifully played out and funny.

In the ‘Last Word’ they play a UK couple with country accents, Knuckey as the husband who looks after his paralysed wife. Whilst he is reading the paper next to her on a walk in the park, an internal monologue of how she feels is played out on stage. This is an excellent last piece by both actors exhibiting the fragility of their relationship.

The title piece ‘The Days Are as Grass’, played by Cotter and Greenough are excellent as old friends meeting up after twenty years. Discussing their affair over drinks, jazz playing in the background, whilst Cotter laments the end of his last relationship with a man, being left for a younger man, there is a hint of their relationship as more than the affair of the mind by Greenough.

Carol Hall is an American composer and lyricist, known for writing and composing for Broadway musicals and Sesame Street. The Days Are as Grass is an intelligent well written beautifully acted series of short plays exploring the universal themes of relationships, suited to the intimacy of a small theatre like The Depot.

Charlotte Hanson

Images: Kimball Knuckey and Christine Greenough; Richard Cotter and Felicity Steel; Kimball Knuckey and Felicity Steel; & Kimball Knuckey and Felicity Steel. Photographer: Clare Hawley.

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