Over the course of Wendy Harmer’s play, written with Sancia Robinson, we find out all about what is wrong with Mary Jane. She is having one hell of a battle with the disease, anorexia nervosa.
The play only goes for sixty minutes but it is a harrowing hour, seeing a young woman’s life thrown into chaos. Every time she gets something out of the fridge she has this enormous dialogue with herself as to whether she can justify eating the piece of food that she has selected.
Then there’s the phone call from a friend asking her to come out with a group to have some pizza. Everybody loves pizza! We (the audience) can feel the internal anguish that Mary Jane goes through in coming to her decision which is always going to be 200% No.
We then watch the cruel shift from anorexia to binge eating where she pushes everything into her blender, churns it up, takes the mush out, skulls it all, and then rushes to the loo to throw it all up…No way to live, especially for a twelve year old…
Gabrielle Savrone gives a highly credible performance as the distressed Mary Jane. The play is based on Sancia Robinson’s adolescent experience as an anorexia sufferer. In a good news story not only has Sancia lived to tell the story- no small feat, anorexia claims many lives each year- but she has also gone on to establish a successful career in the performing arts.
After last night’s performance there was an enlightening panel discussion, co-presented by the Seymour Centre and the Charles Perkins Centre, on the whole topic of Eating Disorders and the new approaches in treatment and management of this insipid disease.
The panel discussion, which also saw the panelists take questions from the audience, featured Professor Stephen Touyz, Clinical Professor, Associate Head, Clinic, School of Psychology, Associate Professor Amanda Salis, Sydney Medical School Centres/Boden Institute Obesity Nutrition and Exercise, and Professor Stephen Simpson (chair) Academic Director of the Charles Perkins Center and Professor in the School of Biological Sciences.
What came across clearly from the discussion was the whole field of eating disorders remains a very tricky one with plenty of false dawns and myths, and that the best chance of patients recovering from the disease is when it is caught at an early stage. Once the disease starts to take hold, patients often face a life long battle.
Recommended, WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH MARY JANE? is playing the Reginald Theatre, Seymour Centre until the 8th August. For more details visit the Seymour Centre’s official website- http://www.seymourcentre.com.