Yielding and Big Horn

Yielding and Big Horn
Yielding by Emma Workman / Big Horn by Paul Rogers. Crying Chair Theatre at Flight Path Theatre, Sydney. Directors: Richard Cotter and Tricia Youlden. 26 May – 6 June, 2021

As its name suggests, the Flight Path Theatre building in Marrickville sits right under the flight path into Sydney’s airport. Regular hard-to-ignore landing noise requires actors to raise their voices often. But it’s amazing how a collective concentration between performers and a small (20-plus) audience can shut out excess noise, as happened during the performance of Yielding by Emma Workman, the first of the two short plays that constituted the evening.

This play was one of four nominated for Best Australian Work at the 2018 Matilda Awards in Queensland and is, indeed, a corker. Emma Workman manages to get a 70-year-old stroke-wrecked, mute mother (Dot, Tricia Youlden) and her damaged, exhausted daughter (Liz, Emma Dalton) on stage and in communication for 50 minutes. Dot knows the way out of this ghastly situation, and eventually Liz knows it too, but the agony must continue.

Tricia Youlden gives a heart-tugging performance as the battered mother, showing all sides of her life, from reasoning parent to completely hopeless wreck, screaming ‘like a cut cat’. And Emma Dalton matches her every step of the way, as she dreams of getting back some of the life that her mother has sucked from her. Richard Cotter directs this small miracle.

Jobs are swapped in the next play, Big Horn by Paul Rogers: Tricia Youlden directs and Richard Cotter plays the desperately twinkling oldster, Ray Bold. On a neat setting by Allan Walpole, the cast of four battle to retain our attention against the noise of landing aircraft. In fact, the script calls for extra passing planes over Ray’s house (presumably in Marrickville) and the sound effects remind us that the real thing lasts longer and rumbles deeper.

Ray tangles with his daughter-in-law Kate (Mel Day) who is left with the old codger after the deaths of his wife and son. There’s also his paid Carer, Max (Eloise Martin-Jones), who very nearly gets entangled with him. Much tippling of Whiskey takes place before Ray takes his leave.

The effect of the first play is so strong that anything that follows will be diminished.

Frank Hatherley

Photographer: Andrea Mudbidr

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