Where There’s a Will

Three sisters fight over their mother’s will. In this play, the twist on the cliché, ‘where there’s a will, there’s a way.’, is ‘where there’s a will, there’s a fight.’  These sisters’ fight is vicious, malicious, irrational, childish, careless with the truth – and funny.  The nub of the battle is a beach house, once the scene of happy holidays of sun and surf, now dilapidated and stacked with years of memorabilia (i.e. junk) – stuff the girls and their Mum left behind – every item of which is now a reason for bickering, claim and counterclaim. 

Carla (Annie Wilson Stafford), cool, disdainful and at the end of her tether - is the eldest and, we gather, the only disinterested, rational one of the siblings.  Thus in the past, Mum’s favourite – but nicknamed ‘Medusa’ by her sisters due to her chilling death stare… 

Mum’s will simply divides her entire estate by three – an apparently simple idea fraught with personality problems.  All Carla wants is to execute the will and be done with it.  No chance.  Karen (Elizabeth Walley), a shonky businesswoman in diet shakes (!), blocks every move – even though she is not an executor herself.  Denise (Natasha Broadstock), on the other hand, is just resolutely childish, uncooperative and hysterical.

Much hinges on the death, years previously, of younger sister, Jane.  The irrelevance of this to the will is some muddy moral argument about who was to blame – and therefore who is deserving.  Although it’s perfectly clear that Jane died of a drug overdose and choked on her own vomit, it is, of course, according to Karin, Carla’s fault - an accusation Karen makes over and over in the face of any rational evidence.  

Playwright Christine Croydon employs a non-linear structure so that we can go back in time and see the key bones of contention.  Curiously, the crucial night of Jane’s death is not depicted.  The best thing about the structure is the scenes with Mum (Maureen Hartley).  Mum was a rather lousy laissez-faire mother whose idea of intervention is to say, wistfully, ‘I do wish you girls could get along.’  Maureen Hartley virtually steals her every scene – if not the show: every eyeroll and dry-as-dust remark – delivered with perfect timing - gets a laugh.  Mum is the comic figure of this comedy.

The non-linear structure unfortunately also means that we are sometimes confused as to just where we are in in time and whether what we’re seeing is really important – for instance, a flashback to a wild, drug-fuelled party thrown by Karen and Denise and, naturally, not approved by Carla. 

In order to maintain conflict – and comedy – Croydon keeps returning to conflicts and character traits that become silly rather than amusing.  When Carla comes around to get Denise to sign a document so that the funeral can go ahead, Denise flatly – if loudly – refuses and yells at Carla to get out.  Carla gets out.  So, we wonder, was there a funeral? 

As Karen, Elizabeth Walley is trapped in one-note aggression that soon gets tedious (possibly for her as well).  Natasha Broadstock fares rather better by just going one hundred per cent with Denise’s resentful childishness – giving substance to the character by making a virtue out of what’s missing in the writing.

Comedy is tough but here things might be improved – and funnier – if the lines of conflict and each character’s agenda were clearer.  Carla wants to sell the beach house so as to divide the proceeds three ways – as per the will.  But Karen and Denise want to keep it.  Why?   I was never quite clear what Karen and Denise wanted – beyond blocking and annoying their bossy sister. 

Michael Brindley

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Photographer: Darren Gill