Review: Blessed Union brings the queer family kitchen to the stage
There’s nothing more terrifying than realising you’ve fought so hard all your life just to become mundane. Ruth (Danielle Cormack) and Judith (Maude Davey), the lesbian activist power couple at the centre of Maeve Marsden’s debut play Blessed Union, are on the verge of ending their hard-won 30-year marriage, and rightfully terrified. Their kids, painfully neurotic law student Delilah (Emma Diaz) and brash, wise-cracking Asher (Jasper Lee-Linsday), aren’t having a bar of it (in more ways than one).
In the big-hearted hands of Maeve Marsden and director Hannah Goodwin, this nowhere-near-mundane lesbian divorce dramedy deftly captures the tension between political, rational thinking and the messiness of being a person with feelings. Blessed Union is a smart, rom-com bookend to Elias Jamieson Brown’s activist history play CAMP (playing not far away at the Seymour Centre), with the concerns and tensions of 1970s queer activists always humming along underneath Ruth and Judith’s decisions in their modern, post-marriage equality relationship. Can they really “queer” their divorce just as they did their marriage? Can you ever really make your feelings fit into a step-by-step process?
Before everything falls apart, the characters make up the kind of family that lovingly spars at the dinner table, arguing about the correct versions of socialist history or political factoids they tell each other. Marsden’s writing is delightfully specific, and the actors take well-earned pleasure in embodying the quirks and flaws of their characters. Cormack’s rough, masculine Ruth attempts to be rational (and inevitably can’t keep up the facade) and Davey’s soft, emotional Judith has glorious moments of tenderness and hopelessness. Diaz is fabulous as the eldest daughter who sacrifices herself to keep everything together because “it’s the right thing to do”, and Asher is surprisingly wise as the only person who isn’t caught up in maintaining his identity. Their chemistry fizzes with warmth, and the jokes, tender moments and desperately sad moments are so expertly drawn out by Goodwin (who did an equally excellent job with last year’s Never Closer).
Despite all this brilliance, my favourite part about Blessed Union is how it uses family meals, food and cooking as a visceral and multi-dimensional representation of the way Ruth, Judith, Delilah and Asher show care for each other and make messes of themselves.
Isabel Hudson’s set is a huge, open kitchen complete with avocado seedlings along the window sill and tastefully matched dining chairs. The actors use real food and real appliances to cook with. The potential for mess, and pain, is always threatened by the sounds of thudding knives and freshly washed vegetables being thrown together. In the beginning scenes, the smell of an elaborately recreated South American chilli that Ruth and Judith ate together on one of their holidays pre-children wafts up towards the audience as they dutifully “disentangle” themselves from each other by handing back sentimental items. The family makes pasta together, quickly taking on their well-worn roles (Asher’s, of course, is as a pasta drying stand) and realising these roles no longer work for them. Later, Judith angrily blends together hummus for Asher, intermittently drowning out Ruth’s protesting to hilarious effect. She slops the hummus on a plate, throws on some pre-cut cucumbers and carrots, and storms out of the kitchen under the guise of making sure her son has something to eat.
When things fall apart even more, Asher and Delilah cook themselves some frozen dumplings in an attempt to connect with the Asian heritage that they have lost; being brought up by a pair of white lesbians. Judith, sitting alone, drinks whisky and cooks slices of bacon on a barbeque she’s bought from Bunnings – a pushback on Ruth’s insistence that the family eat only vegetarian food. Time is measured in short scenes across Easter and Christmas meals, and we watch characters rebuild and change settings to the marching drum beat of Alyx Dennison’s sound design.
As the family leans into their messiness so too does the set, with all the meals they cook together piling up across the kitchen benches and dining table; a visual reminder of the effort, the mistakes, and the love they share. No one can be perfect forever, and no one is good at change, not even whip-smart, university-educated queers. Sometimes, the dishes go unwashed, and sometimes, the only thing left to do is lay in a heap on the floor.
Right at the end, the family start to clean up their mess together. They push all their dishes, cutting boards, pots and pans to the sink and the kitchen bench to make space for a new family meal. This one is simpler, a breakfast of waffles, croissants and mimosas. It’s not a lunch or a dinner elaborately and painstakingly put together, it’s the start of something different.
Blessed Union is made exquisitely human with all the dedication and talent of its team. There are so many delicious layers to the way that the characters show love for each other, and it is because of this love that they know how to hurt each other, too. Nothing is out of place in this comedy that doesn’t stop raising the stakes and reminds us to laugh at ourselves, even when we can’t help but keep fighting. Blessed Union asks us: who are we fighting for, if not for each other? And who do we cook for, if not for those we love?
Blessed Union plays as part of Sydney WorldPride 2023 at Belvoir’s Upstairs Theatre until 11 March. Find tickets here.
Production images by Brett Boardman
Charlotte is the editor of Kaleidoscope Arts Journal, a little enby and a big mess. Their friends regularly worry that they might overdose on theatre.
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