Lunch Hour by John Mortimer. The Players Company directed by Charles Glyn-Daniel at the Union Theatre, University of Canberra, November 13, 1998.
The only boring thing about this brand new theatre company is their name. And the fact that they are doing only one lunch-time stand - so you've missed an excellent performance of a clever half-hour piece about a married man and a young woman, one of his junior work colleagues, who plan to consummate their six month clandestine affair in a cheap hotel with an interesting landlady.
The stories The Man (Jason Savage) has told The Manageress (Mickey Beckett) to explain why he is meeting his "wife" for an hour over lunchtime in her not-so-cheap room (he has to pay for a day) reveal to The Girl (Fiona Gregory) that she had better get out from under. Gregory especially stands out even among her very experienced colleagues for playing so clearly both the complexity of the character, as she realises the import of The Man's fiction for her future reality, and the subtlety of the social class distinctions, as the daughter of the working class seeks to move up into the colder stratosphere of the successful English upper middle class.
Charles Glyn-Daniel is the centre of gravity for a new "theatre of intrinsic value". Using the Union Theatre at University of Canberra as its base - but moving out into other venues which suit - the Company will give a new airing to plays from English speaking traditions which have become neglected in what Glyn-Daniel sees as the imposition of neo-realism on theatre over the past few decades - "social workers' casebooks on stage".
With moral support from UC, (including some financial help from the Co-op Bookshop, UC Union and UC's Canberra Centre for Writing and Cultural Studies) Lunch Hour will go on again, maybe during Happy Hour at Theatre 3, for example. The next production being planned is R.C.Sherriff's 1928 anti-war play Journey's End. Glyn-Daniel also says he wants a more broadly intellectual weekly theatre review column in The Canberra Times!
I can only say, Go for it G-D! All God's Chillun Got Wings (Eugene O'Neill, 1924) and you should let fly for our enjoyment, stimulation and satisfaction.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
