The Dear Departed

Ever dreamed of sitting in on a recording session of The Goon Show? Then this is the show for you. Stanley Houghton’s play The Dear Departed is a witty early-20^th century farce satirising the pretentions and greed of a not quite but aspiring upper middle-class family as they pick like vultures over the belongings of their very freshly dead patriarch. A collaboration between Bart Meehan, one of the creative forces behind ArtSound Radio Theatre, and Lexi Sekuless of The Mill Theatre at Dairy Road, this new adaptation harks back to the golden age of radio which was broadcast live in front of a studio audience.

Able Merryweather, alcoholic widower, having returned from a breakfast of only four beers, has been found dead by his grown daughter Amelia. Barely pausing to feign grief, she and her stammering wreck of a husband Henry set to stripping the dead man’s room of anything vaguely valuable before her sister Elizabeth and husband Ben arrive and the squabbling begins.

The cast is in fine voice embellishing these characters for radio. Andrea Close and Helen McFarlane are a perfectly matched comic pairing as the avaricious sisters Amelia and Elizabeth. Both very well known to the Canberra theatre scene, these women command the stage with upper class British accents ringing like cut crystal. Richard Manning and Timmy Sekuless imbue Amelia’s stammering husband Henry and Elizabeth’s feckless husband Ben with hilarious vocal mannerisms. Daughter Victoria (Sarah Hartley) is wide-eyed and delightful, blurting out truths her parents would prefer hidden, and Graeme Rhodes hams up the dreadful dead Abel Merryweather with great relish.

Meehan and Sekuless’s adaptation includes quite substantial concessions to the sound environment, including the addition of a narrator and exaggeration of the characters. Henry has been given a nervous stutter, Victoria now lisps, while Ben has acquired an unseemly love of biscuits. An entire, very funny flashback sequence has been inserted between Victoria and her grandfather.

It was also amazing to watch the sound effects being created in real time. From a crank-handled device making a creaky door noise to clattering china, slamming boxes, footsteps and bells, all handled by the cast, the entire aural set was entirely analogue and handled by the cast themselves. This required an extraordinary feat of co-ordination, with the actors were constantly in motion, very carefully picking up and replacing the props so there were no sounds out of place.

There was a full house the first night on opening night with people turning up and begging for tickets, so you’ll have to act fast to get seats to this hilarious nostalgic romp.

Cathy Bannister

Rehearsal Images: Maddie & Mark Photography