Theatre review: Housework pierces the Canberra bubble in bleakly funny political satire
A droll new play from State Theatre Company South Australia takes audiences behind closed parliamentary doors, where aspiration and idealism are often overrun by cynicism and dirty tricks.
In a recent interview Emily Steel told InReview that her wittily-named parliamentary drama, Housework, is about power: “Who is getting into those positions of power? What does it cost them? How much should you sacrifice to get things done?”
There is much speculation — and even more cynicism and despair — about politics in this country, not helped by its portrayal in various media. Emily Steel decided to go to Canberra and find out for herself. She is a forensic playwright. For her excellent commissioned work, Euphoria, examining mental health issues in regional South Australia, she went to towns and communities and talked to people and, more importantly, listened to what they had to say.
And likewise she did homework for Housework. “I talked with politicians, political staff and parliamentary staff in both State and Federal parliaments. I read a bunch of books. I absorbed the news in all the usual ways”, she says in the program notes, “I tumbled it around in the washing machine of my brain … until the colours ran and it went out of shape, and then I wrote the play.”
The result is an engaging, disturbing, bleakly funny, problematic and sympathetic fiction about very real, sometimes notoriously recognisable, situations. It focuses particularly on the trials and impediments for women in politics — and the often-parlous lack of sisterhood in this dog eat chihuahua arena.
The focus is on first time MP Ruth Mandour (Susie Youseff), a former nurse looking to counter health inequality, particularly for women. Her concern is the absence of clinical trials for women — excluded from research because their hormonal cycles are deemed too variable to be scientifically reliable. It is a real-world problem and a reason for getting elected to bring about change.
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This is the crux of Steel’s play. Good people, especially women, wanting to get good things done. But it is also scathing in showing the road of good intentions making U-turns into perfidy and intrigue. It is a gradual process, almost imperceptible — like the luckless boiling frog. The parlaying for influence, the trading for favours, crosses boundaries into emotional and ethical abuse.
Susie Youssef, Emily Taheny, Franca Lafosse, Renato Musolino, and Benn Welford in Housework. Photo: Matt Byrne / Supplied
In State Theatre Company South Australia’s first production for the year, director Shannon Rush has brought Steel’s crisply written and artfully argued text into vivid reality. Designer Ailsa Paterson’s formidable set — a dominating series of marble tiled columns and, at the centre, a long, heavy brown wooden table — almost overpowers the human frailty and effort, mocking the players with a portentous importance and responsibility that they cannot live up to.
Nigel Levings’ impeccable lighting brings softer hues and welcome remission to the fallible characters, while Andrew Howard’s taiko interludes and rattling drumsticks provide momentum and urgency to the proceedings.
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Steel’s wonderful dialogue is well served by the performers. In the opening scene we glimpse a gently sly exchange with an aggrieved constituent who has had his rubbish bin stolen. It is a council matter, bins. Not for an MP to fix. But Kelly, the newbie idealistic junior, engagingly played by Franca Lafosse, is touched by the predicament while her Chief of Staff, Anna (Emily Taheny), opportunistically turns it into a chance to score political points for her MP.
Its comedy cleverly disarms us, leaving us unprepared for the escalation of realpolitik and dirty tricks in Act Two.
Taheny is excellent as Anna, the most closely detailed character in the play. She has been sidelined because of a workplace relationship but is on the rise again, she also has to juggle family obligations — which are given short shrift from Youssef, implacable as Ruth, her often blunt and self-interested MP.
Rush expertly manages the often-unexpected shifts in viewpoint and conflict between the three women, and it is key to the complexity and rigour of Steel’s portrait of a workplace. There is also interesting doubling of roles — opposition staff depicted by red framed glasses for instance — and more pointedly, Sunitra Martinelli features in the opening scene as the unnoticed office cleaner and then, later, cameos as the Prime Minister.
Franca Lafosse and Emily Taheny. Photo: Matt Byrne / Supplied
Benn Welford revels in the broad comedy as Ben, the passed-over media officer, weaselling any chance for advantage and advancement, only to be confounded by enormous changes at the last minute.
Outstanding as Paul, the Minister for Science and Inappropriate Dalliances, Renato Musolino is both comically obnoxious and a lost soul. Steel is not portraying a predator, rather highlighting the pitfalls of the Canberra bubble in all its isolation and distorted, impulsive social interaction. She satirically describes rivals in parliament cynically attempting to out-Me-Too each other.
Housework is great start to the year for State. Emily Steel, already impressive with previous works, has written a mainstage work that is more than just boulevard comedy. It is a many-faceted work that speaks to troublesome times, when we are at risk of losing faith in democratic process, when principle is leveraged into expediency. It reminds us that good things must still be pursued somehow. Otherwise, they will be cancelled by orange despots signing edicts they don’t even read.