The Sydney Theatre Company brought back Alan Seymour’s classic play ‘One Day Of The Year’ to the Wharf theatre.
Sydney Theatre Company Artistic Director Robyn Nevin helmed the production and brought together a strong cast for the production intent on proving the play which was first performed to much controversy in 1961 has lost none of its edge.
Everyone knows ‘The One Day Of The Year’ as that play about Anzac Day with a son calling his father on how he sees Anzac Day as just an excuse for a big piss-up. What makes Seymour’s play so good is that it is also about much more….
This is a play about Hughie just starting to come out of his familys’ shadow, and forge his own identity. He has never really questioned his parents’ authority before and struggles deeply with it.
If there is one emotion that typifies Hughie through the play it is angst! And this is the through-line of Nathaniel Dean’s performance.. Hughie’s choices are hard; should he be loyal to his parents, to his new girlfriend, follow his new cerebral, political approach or follow his heart. Indeed is he still a boy or a man?!
Some in Australia in the 1960’s would have viewed Australia as a classless society. Not Alan Seymour!
The working class Cook family just can’t handle Hughie’s new friend, Jan Castle. She’s a North Shore girl. What would she know about life in the Western Suburbs?! Whenever she’s in the house, the Cook’s are ill at ease.
The role of Jan Castle is a meaty role for an actress to play, and talented NIDA graduate Eloise Oxer takes up the challenge well. Oxer plays Jan as intense and cerebral and a touch insensitive and unconscious. In a revealing scene, she describes Mrs Cook as a bit working class before she realises the slip’ she has made.
In the 1960’s more kids were going to University hoping to give them more opportunities in life. Working class families like the Cook’s were wary of their kids going to university because they then found that they started to question everything.
Max Cullen’s infused his portrayal of Alf Cook with a kind of nobility. A hard living, gruff, bulldog of a man, he was still the father, that when push came to shove, insisted that Hughie continue at University, despite everything. He wanted his son to become more than a lift driver, which was his fate.
Kris McQaude’s role as Mrs Dot Cook was that of a peace broker in between making cups of teas. She was in that zone that all mothers dread, when sons grow up and feel its time to stand up to and square off with their Dads.
Ron Haddrick completed playing the cast, playing salt of the earth Wacka, a little oblivious to the family drama happening around him.