There are times when theatre is quite simply just a little bit of magic. Such is the case with the Glen Street Theatre’s presentation of Melbourne playwright Robert Hewitt’s ‘The Blonde, The Brunette and the Vengeful Redhead’, a one woman show starring one of our most celebrated actresses, Jacki Weaver.

About the storyline. An assault takes place within a shopping complex, and the victim of the assault dies. The play takes us inside the heads of seven people who are affected by the tragic incident, and give some very different perspectives.

It amounts to an interesting but not particularly original narrative. What gives the play its spark, is the way the story is done, and this has something to do with Robert Hewett’s playwriting philisophy. I read an article in the Age which came some way to describe it.”I believe that creating good roles for actors is a crucial part of the playwrights’ job. I come from an actor’s background, so I know how good actors can be. It’s what drives a night in the theatre along. The audience loves to see actors tap-dancing away, showing all their skills’.

And this is certainly what Jacki Weaver does in ‘The Blonde. The Brunette and The Vengeful Redhead’. She performs seven vignettes, playing each of the characters, as they say out loud what they think about the tragedy, unknowingly revealing themselves. Weaver’s transformations from one character to another are carried out in full view of the audience at two dressing tables, at either side of the stage, replete with costumes, wigs and make-up. Emotions were so close to the surface. One moment the audience was in stitches, laughing at Weaver playing an old yobbo, and the next there was a hushed silence as Weaver played the guilty woman, talking from behing bars. This was no frills theatre of a kind, stripped of any technical effects, drawing all of its power from the quality of the actor on stage and the quality of the words given to her. And it worked a treat!