How to Plot a Hit in Two Days by Melanie Tait. Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, August 29 – October 11, 2025.
Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 13
Playwright: Melanie Tait
Director: Lee Lewis; Assistant Director: Tiffany Wong
Set & Costume Design: Simone Romaniuk
Lighting Design: Brockman; Composer & Sound Design: Paul Charlier
Stage Manager: Jen Jackson; Assistant Stage Manager: Sherydan Simson
Costume Supervisor: Renata Beslik
This production is made possible by the Commissioners’ Circle and The Tracey Trinder Playwright's Award.
Cast
Sharon – Amy Ingram
Dell – Genevieve Lemon
Bert – Seán O'Shea
Judy – Georgie Parker
Sally – Julia Robertson
Turning the death of Molly into a heart-warming comedy was a stroke of genius on Melanie Tait’s part.
For anyone else as ignorant as me, who never watched A Country Practice, the crucial question is, Did Molly Really Die?
As serendipity would have it, my wife and I missed our usual appointment to watch ABC TV’s 7.30 just last Monday. You can watch it now, at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-08/behind-molly%E2%80%99s-heartbreaking-death-on-a-country/105750504 celebrating 40 years since Molly’s “heartbreaking death” as “a new play goes inside the writer’s room to reveal how that heartbreaking storyline was created. Richard Mockler brings us this story” including interviewing the actors, Anne Tenney (Molly) and Shane Withington (her husband, Brendan).
So the answer to that crucial question is complicated. Molly was a fictional character, so “iconic” that she still hasn’t died in our cultural memory. But that’s only because she really did die, in that fiction.
And now, Melanie Tait – who is obviously very real – has created her fictional story of the group of writers, as she imagined them, who created the fictional Molly for the very real Anne Tenney to act, 40 years ago. In deciding, over many fraught sessions, about how to “kill” Molly, Tait’s writers find themselves imagining why Anne has decided to leave the show, and so create for them this awful task of writing Molly out. Was it just for a better paid acting job somewhere else?
The real Anne doesn’t say in the 7.30 interview, but does say “They coined my character mad Molly, for some reason or other. She was very involved in local issues and very environmentally aware.” Hmm!
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| Writers Team: Julia Robertson whose other job is ICU Nurse, Sally, who has seen someone die from leukemia. Georgie Parker as Judy, the final writer who "kills" Molly. |
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| Writers Team: Genevieve Lemon as Dell Isn't there another character we could make a theatre critic and get Judy to kill? (The Mirror's Woeful Theatre Section revolting little man) Seán O'Shea as Bert, whose wife takes off with a camera grip on a film shoot in Darwin. Georgie Parker as Judy |
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| Amy Ingram as Sharon, in full motorcycle gear. Full rock star/former jail inmate vibes. |
In
the end the important thing, as you watch Melanie Tait’s imagination
made real before your very eyes by the terrific top-quality actors, so
precisely directed in every detail of lifted eyebrow, rolled eyes,
widened eyes and clarity of ironic speech, the real answer is that at
many points you will die laughing.
But in the end you will be seriously impressed by Tait’s skill making humour telling. A Country Practice
may have been a commercial television soapie, but the way that team of
writers finally came up with the way Molly dies – maintaining for the
audience not just a conventional sentimentality about her unfortunate
passing, but a positive view of her life as a mother and wife – turned A Country Practice into a positive social force.
The play, How to Plot a Hit in Two Days,
is wonderfully enjoyable to watch, especially because the group of
writers, each quite different personalities, work so well together,
understanding each others’ feelings about problematic situations in
their own lives which arise from working out the effects on people who
will watch Molly’s death – from understanding medical issues (she dies
from leukemia), social and family issues, and environmental issues
(after all, it’s a country practice).
The theatre company
is not called Ensemble for nothing. This is an ensemble production of
the best kind – light-hearted in performance and strong-hearted in
effect.
As the playscript says (it includes the program, for $10: Currency Press), This
isn’t your average conference room. It’s where writers are expected to
come up with ideas, so it’s comfortable, lived in and welcoming. Indeed it is.
Certainly not to be missed.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
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