Review: The Approach is a play that lingers
Review by Rebecca Cushway
The sound of low-flying planes shook the Flightpath Theatre as the lights went up on two estranged friends sharing the stage. They sat on either side of a wide round table, not more than a few metres apart, with a palpable chasm growing between them. I watched as polite small talk unfolded into well-meaning gossip, waiting for the penny to drop. There was something dark hovering at the edges of their conversation, the women dropping tragic details while barrelling on with back-and-forth pleasantries. The audience was constantly playing catch-up, trying to understand these women on a deeper level than they were allowing each other.
The Approach, by Irish playwright Mark O’Rowe, is in this version directed by Deborah Jones, maintaining much of the original script's staging and dialogue. This true-to-script interpretation starred Denise (Sarah Jane Starr), Anna (Linda Nicholls-Gidley) and Cora (Lindsey Chapman), three women who were once incredibly close but now meet every few years for strained coffee catch-ups. The play is told in four parts over the course of almost a decade, the women meeting two-by-two at varying stages of anger and pity for the missing party.
Cora and Anna are first up – gossiping about the women they grew up with, commenting on how well people have aged, and asking each other personal questions under the veil of curiosity. They hint at the distance between Anna and her sister, Denise, caused by a broken-down relationship with an ex-boyfriend. Nicholls-Gidley is brilliantly restrained as Anna. She sits stiff, uptight and judgemental as she makes faux-friendly conversation, finally leaking anger from her terse facade when Cora mentions her estranged sister. In the next scene, set years later, we see Cora sit with Denise, notably bubblier than her sister but still humble-bragging about her new kitchen counter and fabulous husband to this woman she is no longer close to. They clash again when Cora begins to needle Denise about her sister.
At last, the sisters sit together, the next scene taking place years later, seemingly having reconciled. They chitter with disdain about their old friend Cora, and how her boyfriend whom she boasted so loudly about was actually beating her in private. It is a dark detail, brushed over and afforded the same time and energy as holiday memories in their conversation. It becomes clear that each woman has missed an opportunity to be happy when they really needed one – a lover, a job, a sister.
The dialogue of this play is unique in that it captures the messy, tentative conversations we have every day, leaving the audience to eavesdrop on these exchanges as though listening to the next table over in a crowded restaurant, guessing at the context. Like life’s fluff, not every conversation is deep and meaningful. This is a brilliant tool for creating tension and realism but leaves little in the way of meaning and message. These characters are humanly complex and flawed but do not invite empathy. They paint a bleak picture of what it is to create relationships on the stage that is polite society, but O’Rowe has done little to analyse what this means.
With minimalist sound and stage design, the audience’s reaction to this play tipped the scales. When the women on stage contradicted themselves by changing a story from one meeting to the next, the audience’s reaction seemed to dictate whether it was a comedic or pitiful moment. When laughter started in one corner of the room, and the consensus was that a joke was in play. Silence around the room meant that the characters had lost some of themselves.
There is an unsettling detail in this play that is brushed over in other reviews but seems to be the key to unlocking whether you see it as a tragedy or a comedy. In the midst of these women discussing the minutiae of their day-to-day lives and briefly touching on topics they desperately want to discuss – they bring up the topic of a young girl they went to high school with. This girl ran away, alarming her mother, up into the mountains. She lived up there for months in the cold, all alone, before she was eventually retrieved. It is gently implied that the girl violently took her own life after that, devastating her mother. All three women on stage mention her disappearance, and all three pointedly lament how horrible it would be to be so alone. Her death is a conversational tool to bond over shared history.
The play begins and ends with this anecdote, pushing the audience to compare these women and their messy, doldrum lives to that poor girl in the mountains. The Approach is about three desperately lonely women, clawing their way towards each other, frantically trying to connect to someone they no longer have anything in common with. Talking about the past and discussing the lives of others, they are stuck in an endless loop of reaching for each other and failing. The play clunkily poses the question: which is the worse fate?
The Approach isn't a play that offers easy answers or neatly tied-up conclusions. Instead, it poses questions about the nature of human connection, the impact of time on friendships, and the masks we wear in our daily lives. It's a play that lingers in your mind long after the final curtain falls, encouraging you to reflect on your own relationships and the ways you communicate with those you hold dear.
The Approach played at the Flightpath Theatre until 2 September 2023. Find more information here.
Images by Abraham de Souza
Rebecca Cushway is a radio host blessed with the most luxurious radio voice in the Inner West and burdened with the ability to do everything everywhere all at once. She’s not nearly as smart as the undergrads she tutors at UTS think she is.
This review was generously donated by Bec.
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