What’s Yours
Once, years ago, Jo (Christina O’Neill) and Lia (Carissa Lee) were best friends. And Jo and Simon (Kevin Hofbauer) were an item. But Jo and Simon broke up – not because of Lia - and Lia started dating Simon – which caused a breach between Jo and Lia. Now, Lia is with Simon and desperate to have a baby, but nothing’s working – well, her eggs aren’t working. Who is determinedly single and not using her eggs? Jo...
Keziah Warner’s play may be a little contrived, but it is heartfelt and truthful, as it delves into being childless – a choice that seems really to annoy some people - and into the complex nature of female friendship. It is eminently rational about irrational issues and emotions. Jo’s eggs are a device. To adapt a maxim from elsewhere, ‘It’s not about the eggs; it’s about what the eggs mean to the characters.’ It’s obvious what Jo’s eggs mean to Lia – and to some extent to Simon. It’s far less obvious what Jo’s eggs mean to Jo. Why did she so carefully preserve her eggs by freezing them? For many in the audience, it might be, ‘What’s the problem, Jo? Give Lia what she wants so badly. You don’t want a baby – so you say. Wasn’t she your best friend?’
Jo is by default the most interesting character in What’s Yours. Christina O’Neil plays Jo powerfully: a complex woman, strong, defiant, defensive, and not always rational. Why should she have to explain or justify herself? O’Neil holds the stage as she has to defend her deliberately childless state to Lia, and her intention to remain so. Lia calls her selfish – of course – and accuses her of believing in nothing. But then Lia has her own single-minded agenda.
We don’t learn as much as we might about Jo. Her catalogue of the pleasures of the single, childless life is believable if insubstantial. What else goes on in her world? A network? A career? Perhaps inadvertently – or against her own intentions - Warner’s focus on a single issue means a character who does seem selfish, perverse, and perhaps lonely too.
Kevin Hofbrauer plays Simon with a nice consistency all the way through. He’s a guy, amiable; he goes along. If Lia wants a baby, okay, that’s fine. Like many a man, he’s an opportunist: his relationship with Jo, it seems, never quite ended... This is a complex ensemble.
Given these issues and the quality of the cast why then does What’s Yours feel sometimes a bit slow and plodding? In her program notes Warner asks if Lia and Jo ‘should be smarter and funnier?’ Well, yes. When Lia allows her desperation to show, she can sound bitchy or mean. (Not that that’s unreal or untrue.) When Jo defends her life choices, she’s not far from pathos. But I wonder if director Isabella Vadiveloo imposed or allowed a slower pace with too many ‘significant’ pauses.
Things get off on the wrong foot when Vadiveloo hangs a full-length sheer curtain across the stage and has the opening action take place behind it so that the characters are shadowy shapes. After a moment, we get it: this is the past. But why create a barrier between us and this vitally important backstory? Later, the curtain is employed to show us that a character not in the scene is (behind the curtain) ever present – or sitting silent at the side of the stage. These things don’t really add theatricality. They don’t help raise What’s Yours above a rather old-fashioned form despite a great cast, the writer’s sincerity and the importance of its issues.
We note that the play was developed through the Red Stitch INK program and that there were some very talented collaborators and advisors. Perhaps ‘truth’ and the issues assumed priority to the detriment of more gripping and perhaps entertaining theatre.
Michael Brindley
Photographer: Ben Fon
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