Review: A CHEERY SOUL at Holden Street Theatres

Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Thursday 26th September 2024.

The three-act comedy, A Cheery Soul, written in 1963, was adapted by Australian playwright, Patrick White, from his 1962 short story of the same title. Patrick White has the honour of being Australia's first recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature. This production, by the Holden Street Theatre Company, is directed by Peter Goërs, who also edited the script to make it a two-act play.

At the end of the 1950s, in the fictional Sydney suburb of Sarsaparilla, lives Miss Docker, the Cheery Soul of the title. Aside from being set in the same fictional suburb, this play is not related in any way to his 1962 play, The Season at Sarsaparilla.

Mrs. Scougall, played by that popular vocalist/pianist/songwriter, Sandi McMenamin, opens the production, wandering in to sit and play an ancient harmonium, setting the tone with an ‘Ocker’ accent on a laughter-inducing version of Try a Little Kindness, and that accent will be common to the whole cast. She is kept busy, as she appears several times, also plays right through the intermission, and is the church organist in the later part of the play.

Miss Docker is taken in by her well-meaning neighbours, Mr. and Mrs. Custance, having been made homeless when the house she had been renting was sold. They quickly discover their dreadful mistake. Catherine Campbell and Robert Cusenza, as the Custances, are a quiet, comfortable couple, she happily goes about the household duties, and he goes to work and tends his garden. Campbell and Cusenza are convincing as a loving couple, regularly showing little displays of affection, whose quiet lives are shattered by the explosion of Miss Docker into their home.

Miss Docker, a one-woman demolition crew, is brilliantly played by Martha Lott, loud, opinionated, self-important, self-righteous, and thoroughly obnoxious. A modern equivalent would be Roy Clarke’s hilariously terrifying creation, Hyacinth Bucket (that’s pronounced Bouquet), charging through life oblivious to what others think of her, and failing to listen to them, nor read the body language and facial expressions.

From the moment that she arrives, with two removalists in tow manhandling her heavy furniture, she criticises and bullies the Custances, constantly invading their personal space, her face inches from whoever she is talking to, and hanging on to their arm to prevent them getting away. This trait continues throughout the play, whomever she might be talking to. Her first comment is that she would have painted the room a different colour, green and cream. She interferes with the cooking of the roast, causing it to burn and, the final straw, kills Ted Custance’s tomato plant by pruning it to death. They ship her off to an old folk’s home.

Her next stop is the Sundown Home for Old People. Here, in reworking the script to make it a two-act version, Goërs edited out the entire encounter with Mrs. Millicent Lillie, a favourite of mine, and very telling of how much people hated Miss Docker, when, coming back from the funeral of Tom Lillie, they stopped for directions, she got out of the car, and they drove off, leaving her there, alone. I’ll admit that I missed that important scene.

It is here in the Home that we encounter the ‘two little old ladies’ approach to a Greek chorus, deliciously played by Sue Wylie and Jo Coventry, delivering their lines in perfect unison, with deadpan expressions. They are a great double act as Mrs. Watmuff and Mrs. Hibble.

The Home is run by the church and, already, we see Miss Docker exerting her influence on that institution. In Act 3, she turns her attention fully to the Church of England, and in particular to the Reverend Wakeman, a tongue-tied clergyman who lacks the skills of writing and delivering sermons and whose parish is gradually getting smaller, a phenomenon affected in no small way by the presence of Miss Docker. She once joined a choir, and it quickly disbanded.

While coming regularly to mow the lawn, Miss Docker intrudes on him and his wife, lusts after the clergyman, and severely criticises him and his work. She believes, or at least claims, that everything that she says and does to people is “for their own good”, a phrase that generally means the exact opposite. She is a monster, and Lott throws herself into the character, embracing the surrealism of Miss Docker and her many encounters in what is, possibly an overused term, but definitely true in this instance, a tour de force.

Reverend Wakeman finally comes up with a worthwhile sermon, aimed directly at Miss Docker, on the “sin of militant virtue”. It misses the mark, and he collapses and dies, although he only seems to collapse in this production, clinging to his pulpit. His wife’s accusation that Miss Docker has killed her saint, her god, perhaps refers, in this case, to his spirit, rather than his mortal body.

Reverend Wakeman and his wife are played by David Arcidiaco and Jessica Corrie who, like the Custances in Act 1, are a loving couple, her support for him clearly displayed. Arcidiaco shows his character’s self-awareness of his inadequacies and responds to Miss Docker’s criticism with a well-crafted display of increasing depression and frustration. Corrie responds to this with her character giving increasing support, and her growing anger against Miss Docker. The two link their characters and their paths beautifully.

In the end, Miss Docker is even rejected by a cattle dog that she tries to befriend. Dogs, they say, are good judges of character. She is left alone on the street, friendless and unloved, rejected and mocked.

Several minor characters, well-portrayed by Amelia Lott-Watson, David O'Brien, Christopher Cordeaux, and Ron Hoenig, all add extra colour to the performance.

Speaking of colour, the set is a riot of colour, the walls and furnishings all covered in a vast number of crocheted blankets of wildly varied designs, reflecting the surrealism of Patrick White’s own favourite play. I hear that bookings are going well, so don’t delay if you want to see this one.