REVIEW: SUNDAY Shares An Imagining Of The Private Life Of Australian Arts Patron Sunday Reed

Friday 1st November 2024, 7:30pm, Drama Theatre Sydney Opera House

Anthony Weigh (playwright) and Sarah Goodes’ (Director) SUNDAY gives audiences a glimpse into the life and loves of Sunday Reed, the force behind the Heide Circle of modernist artists that included Sidney Nolan. Anchored in real events, this fictionalized expression is told with compelling clarity by a quintet of performers led by Nikki Shiels as the central Sunday.

In 1934 John (Matt Day) and Sunday Reed, a lawyer and the daughter of Melbourne’s elite Baillieu family, purchased the former dairy farm that would go on to be the ‘home’ of the Heide Circle of modernist artists that included Sidney Nolan (James O’Connell), Joy Hester (Ratidzo Mambo) and Albert Tucker.  SUNDAY centers on the lives and relationships that inhabited the refurbished and repurposed farm on the Yarra River in Heidelberg, now Bulleen, a suburb previously considered to be on the periphery of Melbourne.  Sunday was considered a driving force behind the Reed’s support of Australian artists and was ahead of her time in rebelling against the normal conventions of how women should behave as she shunned the expected path of tennis games with the girls, mother’s auxiliary clubs and respectable afternoon teas, partly because her first marriage left her unable to have children and her innate desire for a more stimulating life.  While Weigh admits in the show program that much of Sunday’s private life was based on supposition, real people and events and the understanding that Sunday was more than just a mentor and patron to several of the residents at Heide is incorporated into the work.

Given Sunday and John’s life centered on nurturing the creation of art, set designer Anna Cordingley has given Goodes a blank canvas of a white forced-perspective cube frame with two walls and the floor bearing broad watercolor brushstrokes of pale greys.  A broad letterbox recess on the rear wall allows glimpses into the landscapes that Nolan states he doesn’t paint while also providing a space for the passage of time to be expressed with surtitles indicating dates and locations.  Revolves and glimpses of scenes seen through portals allow the center box to be transformed with an appropriate degree of variety without overshadowing the human interaction that remains the centre of the story.  Harriet Oxley’s costuming expresses Sunday and John’s comfortable financial standing and social status with Sunday wearing pants for most of the story, something still less common for women in the 1940’s.  Oxley also uses costuming to express Nolan’s evolution from the struggling artist attending night school who has appeared at Heide in what he imagines people expect an artist to look like, to a young man gaining awareness that he need not dress down but rather let his art speak for itself while presenting as a more respectable member of society.  The scenes, particularly changes, are punctuated by Jethro Woodward’s musical compositions and sound design that relies heavily on percussion interludes that emphasizes the energy and suspense while also providing an expressive underscore to Sunday’s contemporary dance.

At 2 hours, 45 minutes including interval, SUNDAY keeps audiences engaged with a clever script that breaks the story into a series of multiple short scenes delivered in a non-linear sequence.  As the work is Sunday’s story, Nikki Shiels leads the work and inhabits the character with a practiced ease and understanding so no matter how complex Weigh’s monologues and dialogues get, they are delivered with clarity and conviction, balancing the work to land humour perfectly and ensure statements about society and humanity have the requisite power.  Sheils ensures that Sunday has a likability while still expressing that there was a degree of calculation in her actions as well as an underlying mental health concern that is never fully addressed. 

As John Reed, Matt Day ensures that Sunday’s husband is seen as the support to her power as the traditional gender expectations are turned, unsettling outsiders like Nolan when he first approaches the Reeds for sponsorship.  Day expresses that John will do whatever it takes to keep Sunday happy, having become smitten by her from their first meeting, ‘managing’ her variability as best he can as he ensures that Sunday can trust that he’s not the typical 20th century male.  The other man in the relationship, Sidney Nolan, is portrayed with understanding of the conflicted artist by James O’Connell.  O’Connell ensures that Nolan’s evolution is clear along with the fact that he too, has fallen under Sunday’s spell despite his initial expectations that he should be approaching John for advice and funding.  He allows the difference between Nolan and John to be clear as Nolan remains more of a traditionalist even though he did walk away from his wife and child to take up the offer to live and work at Heide. 

The smaller role of Joy Hester is presented by Ratidzo Mambo who does her best with the small role, seen but not really introduced at the Telegraph Art Exhibition, but often talked about and seen in the periphery until John enlists her help.  This late introduction does make the imbalance of the friendship even more distinct as it feels like Weigh considered that Sunday held the power in the relationship and therefore didn’t really find out much about Joy so also made her part thin.  Jude Hyland portrays Sunday and John’s adopted son Sweeney and there is a touching opening scene between Sunday and Sweeney with the extent of his character expressed as a somewhat typical teen wanting to rail against the expectation that he not use inappropriate language despite his mother frequently using the same words.

SUNDAY is an intriguing and engaging piece of theatre with cerebral dialogue, beautiful and simple visuals and a captivating soundscape of contemporary percussion.  Sharing an insight into Australian art history and an intriguing strong woman, this is well worth seeing. 

https://www.sydneytheatre.com.au/whats-on/productions/2024/sunday

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