“Stories are fishy things” says the only male character in Enda Walsh’s THE NEW ELECTRIC BALLROOM, now playing at the Stables Theatre.

He should know something about the piscatorial as he plies his trade trawling the bleak Irish coast where this play is set. He’s trying to hook the youngest sister of a trio of tragic siblings, shipwrecked sheilas smashed on the wretched rocks of love and desire.
These women are certainly “stamped by story”, a story that is re-enacted day after day, like a ritual, complete with a sort of transubstantiation from peasant dress to party frock and garish makeup and lipstick worn like some surreal stigmata.

“What would the Virgin Mary make of all this?” muses Clara, the eldest, who leads this pitiful parley and, like nature, abhors a vacuum. A lull in conversation is anathema. And so the play is awash with talk, as repetitive as waves lapping the shamrock sea shore.

It’s as if a loquacious Leprechaun has re-imagined Sartre’s NO EXIT. NO EXIT, with three people imprisoned in a room, doomed to relive a past strewn with the wreckage of unrequited desires, the only door an entrance where a fisherman, substituting for Sartre’s valet, appears bearing the fruits of his catch, baiting the young Ada, unsure of his lure and lacking confidence in his casting.

Pardoning the pun, there is no such lack of confidence in the casting of this production. Genevieve Mooy as the eldest of the sisters, Clara, Odile Le Clezio the middle sister, Breda, and Jane Phegan as the youngest, Ada, present a tyro trio of tortured souls, who are somehow reconciled to the belief that the happiest time in human existence is in the womb, in amniotic amnesia.

As the sole bloke, Justin Smith plays Patsy, who becomes a patsy in the women’s re-enactment fantasy. He endures a blarney baptism and is reborn as a crooner, a pasty saviour who fails to bring any salvation or succour to the sisters, a dud redeemer and unsuitable suitor for Ada.

Kate Gaul’s production is slick, finely nuanced, and as mentioned, beautifully cast. Tom Bannerman’s set is simple, simultaneously symbolic and functional, while Verity Hampson, whose lighting design illuminated the recent production of THE BOYS at the Stables, again illustrates her mastery of the space.

Kudos too to prop maker Heidi Lincoln for her fabulous fish.

© Richard Cotter

13th March, 2012

Tags: Sydney Play Of The Week- THE NEW ELECTRIC BALLROOM. Edna Walsh, Genevieve Mooy, Olile Le Clezio, Jane Phegan, Justin Smith, Kate Gaul, Tom Bannerman, Verity Hampson, Heidi Lincoln, Heidrun Lohr, Jean Paul Sartre- NO EXIT, Sydney Arts Guide, Richard Cotter.