The Peach Season - by Debra Oswald - SBW Stables Theatre - 14/03/06

Ethan Switch - Wednesday, 15 March 2006 - Print Version

Sold out for the final preview night, the air in the Stables Theatre ranks of the wrinkle in the many faces around the box office. Air conditioning donation requests are all over the place, dangling with a sickly shine under the laminate.

Scrawlings of peaches and all various incoherent babble for insiders takes over the walls of the theatre and stage. From varieties in the field to notes on cultivation and succulence, a concerted effort with the words moving not one smudge to heavy heads hitting the back wall. Silver and black, not moving a tack.

Breaking out the fourth wall without a ticket in hand, Maggie Blinco, in the role of matriarch Dorothy, stands outside the realm of the characters and the story. At the same time, she serves an integral background component; there and not quite there at the exact same time. Jarring at first, it transcends the conceit before snapping back and hitting the face with a discarded peach stone.

Intermission clears out the theatre to where a few are already snorting and choking back peaches. For they eat peaches that juice their arms and leave a sweet smell in the arm pits. Others still are knocking back their drinks, some cast aside with a serious snap back.

John Adam and Anne Looby's characters of Joe and Celia twist and turn with an arm's length all throughout the night. Their relationship a swilling mist of clarity made at the start, misreading will follow and the events that lead them to where they are only proving to the audience, attention is vital in understanding the dynamics of people within each other.

Quite mysteriously, the older set find more laughs in Debra Oswald's script than do the few young adults. One fresh Cheshire Cat is off his cot, breaking any sense of reasoning watching across the way.

Exploring the love in the world of paranoia and over-protection, The Peach Season is heavy on the emotional attempts to string along a wound. Far from the involvement of the first half, the change in scenery by the second opens up a new view on events. One that circles on commentary and thankfully stops before drowning in its own.

For two and some hours, the journey with the people on the orchard leaves a sense of question in what it means to explore and return different from the experience of adventure.

Ethan Switch