Love, Loss and What I Wore – Review

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Review by Danielle Carr

This play presented a distanced American experience. It is also made clear in the first part that it is a subjectively Jewish American voice. This doesn’t mean it’s necessarily far from my experience, though. Because I have a little bit of Jewish ancestry I’m interested to note the rich coiffured ringlets in the women’s hair, something I see a little of in my own. Otherwise it resembles a Riverdancer’s due to Celtic origin. This too in my life has been criticised so I suppose this is where an interlinking occurs with the playwright’s stance that women’s looks are dissected by society.

Some of the argument about the criticism of the female is said to revolve around women being the fairer sex and therefore subject to more intensive scrutiny of their appearance. Of special note in the cast is Rusden College graduate Alison Campbell Rate who has written a play called Hat’s Off to be performed at Brighton Theatre Company. (Rusden College became Deakin University in 1992.) The place that nearly gave me a nervous breakdown travelling there four hours a day which makes me wonder why it wouldn’t have been somehow better to attend the Drama and Media course at Melbourne University. Though this course also inevitably closed partly due to the reduction of the teaching service in the 1990s.

It’s impressive how the production shows that a play can be staged without too much set construction or too many props. The lighting plot is also minimal but suitable for the play’s purposes. It is an example of how the staging of a play can be easier and less momentous. This is educational stage design also for the playwright.

Love, Loss and What I Wore was presented by the Hartwell Players and showed at Ashwood High School Performing Arts Centre MELBOURNE from 6th – 8th April 2017