Theatre Review - Heaven

Heaven                      

By Eugene O’Brien

Producer Bitchen Wolf

Directed by Kate Gail

Loading Dock Theatre until May 31

Photo credit Alex Vaughan

Reviewed by Ron Lee, CSP, MAICD

On the weekend of a wedding in rural Ireland, Mal and Mairead’s two decade marriage is quietly crumbling. For Mal, a buried desire, once repressed in favour of a "normal" life, suddenly resurfaces when a Christlike young man reignites his forbidden desires.

For Mairead, a fiery, tough woman who married Mal to escape her own reckless romantic past, the weekend throws her face-to-face with the one who got away, the man who still holds a piece of her heart.

They have the chance live out their unrealised lusts with the objects of their fantasies.

Heaven is a two-hander that is a series of related monologues performed by Lucy Miller and Noel Hodda. I hadn't seen Hodda on stage in at least two decades and he has lost none of his stage craft. If fact, he has sharpened those skills. In the tiny Loading Dock Theatre you can see the actors' wheels turning, and Hodda was eminently present. It was the best I've seen him. Miller also projects the intensity and regrets of years of frustration. Gotta love an actor who can cry on cue.

The Loading Dock Theatre also has a museum that follows gay history in Sydney and includes some of Kylie Minogue's costumes.