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Bombshells

Michelle Best , miraculously, performs all the roles in this show. It’s a clear-cut case of “wow, I knew she was good, but I never knew she was this good”.

There are precious few who could pull this show off. It requires both a sense of the comedic and dramatic. As well as the ability to turn, on a dime, from one character to the other; not to mention stepping into the shoes of an entirely new role, with barely a breath-pause, about every 20 minutes. Demanding doesn’t begin to describe it.

Firstly, Michelle plays Meryl, a frantic, self-deprecating mother, racing around her kitchen and the neighbourhood. In the old days, she might’ve been told to take up smoking, for her nerves. or have a cuppa and a good lie down. Nowadays, of course, she’s expected to be all things to all people; not least living up to her own, nigh-on impossible expectations. The audience will find instant recognition of hilarious familiarity with the running-on-empty wife and mother, struggling to be chief, cook, bottle washer and all-in domestic goddess, even if she can’t even fulfill her own promise to herself of a coffee.

As tragic as the plight of the overworked, underpaid, stay-at-home mum may be, it’s hard not to be moved to simultaneous guffaws and tears by Tiggy, something of a demure rose, but one whose bloom is now tainted by thorns, born of heartbreak. A cactophile herself, we’re privy to her address of fellow cactus-lovers, as she veers between the desert-dry subject in hand and the more succulent details of her issues with the lover who has spurned her.

Theresa is a plain-speaking Aussie bride. She takes us all the way to the altar, at which point she’s still having doubts and calculating how well she’d emerge, financially, from divorce.

Arguably the most esoteric scenario is Winsome’s. She’s a stitched-up widow (she can’t emphasise it enough), doomed to a life fraternising with other well-heeled widows, save for her community work, which involves reading books to the blind. Much to her surprise, she ends herself in a compromising position with a young sightless man; a situation which, refreshingly, she embraces. This is brave work, in its head-on grappling with issues of ageing that still remain, on the whole, indefensibly taboo.

Bombshells traverses terrain we all know, but with vitality and insight that’s rare. It will be one of the must-see shows of 2017.


Running time 1.5 hours, there is no intermission.

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Location
The Gawler Gallery, Ulverstone Civic Centre

16 Patrick Street Ulverstone Central Coast 7315, Australia


Organiser Information

Andrew Carpenter
Andrew Carpenter
0424794850

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