1997: The Shoe-Horn Sonata by John Misto

The Shoe-Horn Sonata by John Misto.  Reading directed by Eulea Kiraly. The Company at Currong Theatre, Sunday February 23, 1997. 

    The Company began this year's monthly Sunday readings (book on 247 1561) with excellent performances in heat and humidity so bad that everyone agreed to Phil McKenzie's motion that the second half be played outdoors.  Though this meant I sat on a rock, both Pat Hutchinson and  Helen Vaughan-Roberts maintained my focus.  Last year's high standards are clearly established again for 1997.

    Why hold readings?  Eulea Kiraly explained there are reasons anew each month.  Hers was to test this script, winner of the 1995 Australia Remembers National Play Competition, with the intention of full production next year.

    The author's reason for writing the play is a justification for production:  "In 1995 the United Nations announced that more civilians now die in war than soldiers.  Yet they have no equivalent of Anzac Day on which their suffering is recognised.  They are simply forgotten....Although the characters of [Australian nurse] Bridie and [English schoolgirl] Sheila are fictional, every incident they describe is true and occurred between 1942 [when they were captured off Singapore] and 1995 [when they met again after 50 years to be interviewed on television]."  Their story is horrific and poignant: an indictment of the stupidity of war.

    Unfortunately because, I suggest,  the TV documentary interviewer provides no critical analysis, all we hear is one side of the history and the play seems to gratuitously reinforce anti-Japanese attitudes.  I am sure this was not John Misto's intention, but this is the effect: the script needs more work to put the women's experiences into another context, not to undermine the truth or impact of their story, but to give it greater credence.

    I think the journalist making the documentary needs to become more than a male voice-over: perhaps a modern woman making her decisions about how to present these women's war-time experiences and their inevitably biassed attitudes.  In their personal relationship, the war finally ends after 50 years of misunderstanding.  This idea has to be made a clear symbol for people of all nations to respond to.  This for me is the challenge in presenting a full production of The Shoe-Horn Sonata.

© Frank McKone, Canberra