Review: Duets

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Jonathan and Wendy ... looking for love in the classifieds.

Janet would love to "straighten out" Gary.

Bobby and Shelley ... a bit of spark left?

Toby ... mentoring Angela, or is it the other way around?

All images: Steve Lunam.

POSTED: 01 SEPTEMBER 2009

Duets, by Peter Quilter

(Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli, Sydney | Until 3 October)

I didn’t see Noeline Brown’s and Barry Creyton’s first stage appearance together at Sydney’s Phillip Street Theatre in 1962, but I did see them performing together many times over the next few years in The Mavis Bramston Show.

Mavis was edgy, cut-to-the-quick satire that must have had censors working overtime and represented a major landmark in Australian television. It also helped launch or further the careers of other stage-and-screen legends such as Ron Frazer, June Salter, Gordon Chater and Reg Livermore.

Brown and Creyton are good friends who have acted together many times, the last previous to this having been another Peter Quilter play, Glorious, at Ensemble Theatre the year before last.

Their comfort in sharing the stage is obvious and they play off each other superbly in this quartet of very different vignettes that are linked, I suppose, by that universal quest for love, companionship and understanding.

There’s the late-life couple, Jonathan and Wendy, meeting for the first time after responding to each other’s notices in a man-seeks-woman/woman-seeks-man type of magazine. Creyton plays the role to a T — gawky, slightly foot-in-mouth, terrible dress sense and an even worse wig. Brown is appropriately shy and demure, but can easily deliver the witty lines that Wendy admits have made her a threat to potential partners. It’s a point well made. Men expect to be the joke tellers and often aren’t comfortable with women who can steal their limelight. It sets a high standard that is maintained throughout.

Then there’s gay businessman Gary and his long-time personal assistant Janet, who’d love to “straighten” him out and take their professional relationship and personal friendship to another level.

And Shelley and Bobby, on holiday together in Spain but only because they’d bought the tickets before embarking on divorce proceedings. But is there still some spark in the relationship? Methinks so.

Finally, older brother Toby, still single after all those years, mentoring younger sister Angela as she prepares for her third wedding. One obviously only too willing to leap into the deep end, the other seemingly unable to put a toe in the water.

I’m not going to choose a favourite from the four. They’re all intelligently and sympathetically scripted, they’re all beautifully acted and directed, and the costuming is sensational.

This may not be challenging or provocative theatre, but you'd be mad to miss it. Watching Brown and Creyton in Duets is like slipping into a well used leather armchair and curling up in front of the fire with a favourite author. It’s easy to do, it’s thoroughly comfortable, and it’s an absolutely wonderful entertainment.

A very special audience member on opening night was playwright Peter Quilter, who'd flown from Teneriffe to watch the performance. When he joined Brown and Creyton on stage, the applause, quite appropriately of course, became even more hearty. A trio of genuine theatrical treasures.

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