It might have been called “Secret Bridesmaids’ Business” but, as at most weddings, the star of the show was the bride.
Followed closely by the groom.
The other usual suspects – bridesmaid, mother of the bride and matron of honour all made indispensable contributions in the latest offering by Goondiwindi Performing Arts at the Leagues Club over the past couple of weekends.
Playing to packed houses in a makeshift “theatre” it’s a 13-scene play by Elizabeth Coleman, set in a motel room the day before and morning of the big event. Many a scene, many a drama and many a situation were familiar to appreciative and responsive audiences.
The play takes place in the present, in Goondiwindi. Indeed, the program acknowledged the playwright’s permission to adapt it.
There were plenty of “topical” (and perhaps too oft-repeated) references to residents of North Star and Goondiwindi and local landmarks.
Casey Simpson as “Meg Bacon” the bride, shone in her role and was the undoubted star.
She played the role with an assured confidence, resisting any possible temptation to over-act. Her down-to-earth delivery, empathetic approach and salty language produced the loudest laughs.
She had her lines down pat and carried off the excitement and anxiety of so many brides on wedding eve.
But she didn’t stray into the emotionally-stilted self-conscious territory chacteristic of the amateur, producing an emotion-laden performance without ever leaving the impression of “over-acting.”
She was convincing having a drink, applying her make-up, sharing a confidence…in a mix of situations, but never more so than on being given the news of her groom’s betrayal.
She related well to “husband-to-be James” played by an insouciant Russell Baldock. He was particularly convincing pleading forgiveness for his affair, all the while lamenting the end of his days of freedom as a single man.
Russell’s performance was poised and confident with enough “larrikin” to resonate with many in the male section of his audiences, or at least their memories. “Naomi Bartlett,” the “other woman” and object of James’ straying eye, played by Renee Cribb, was also convincing. She produced a credible performance with the right degree of deference and confusion at being thrust into the moral dilemma of becoming a last-minute fill-in bridesmaid. Mother-of-the-bride “Colleen Bacon” (Frankie Donaldson) offered an insight into the role played so often in real-life local weddings – an obsessional unnecessary attention to trivial detail, combined with the “what will other people think of me?” uncertainty so common in middle-class rural Australia. Bridesmaid “Lucy” (Binnie Donovan) and matron-of-honor “Angela” (Judy Hanna) made a good fist of their parts which saw their major contributions in the first seven scenes.
“Motel Assistant” Amanada Wex was suitably unobtrusive and competent in her cameo appearances.
As a production, the play takes rather too long to warm up. The early scene-setting segments are cliché-riddled, with telegraphed punchlines, but this didn’t bother an appreciative audience, out for an enjoyable night.
The production was hampered by its location – the big room at the Leagues Club is no theatre and never will be, despite whatever excuses or justifications may be proffered. You really can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
We can only lament yet again, the fact that Goondiwindi has nowhere suitable to stage amateur and (a couple of times a year) professional theatre.
The low ceiling meant parts of the audience were dazzled when actors were forced to deliver soliloquys from the back of the room. This was a part of the production that didn’t work so well.
Indeed, full of clichés and platitudes, they took up time, added to the burden of learning lines and hardly advanced the story. If the director decreed them absolutely necessary, they’d have worked much better delivered from the stage. Brevity, as the Bard noted, is the soul of wit.
It seems that the new Goondiwindi Regional Council is more interested in building skateparks for a handful of kids who can’t be bothered using the plethora of sporting facilities already at their disposal than in having any real interest in the people who actually pay the rates.
That said, “Bridesmaids” was an enjoyable production that once again proves that local audiences will support such ventures by attending in great numbers. Hopefully, some of our civic leaders might have been among them.
Goondiwindi is lucky to have such organisations as Performing Arts. Long may they prosper.
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