REVIEW: Guest Reviewer Sienna Brown Shares Her Thoughts on TIDDAS

Sunday 14th January 2024, 6:30 pm Belvoir St Theatre

TIDDAS, the first production for the year at the iconic Belvoir Theatre is a blast! 

Originally premiered in 2022, at La Boite Theatre as part of the Brisbane Festival, TIDDAS is a warm, joyous, feel-good yarn about sisterhood and the celebration of women. Brilliantly adapted by writer Anita Heiss from her novel Tiddas (Simon & Schuster), the play centers around the relationship between five friends and their partners, who have known each other since they were children.

 

Zoie Rouse’s set design brightens up a normally black backdrop at Belvoir, by the use of a honey coloured, semi-circular bookshelf that hugs the entire stage. Scattered in front, comfortable chairs and tables are moved by the actors to create scene changes, providing the suburban comfort against which the Tiddas’ – Izzy, Xanthe, Ellen, Nadine and Veronica - stories unfold. 

They are each dealing with familiar issues that resonate for women heading towards their 40’s. Work and career up against the desire to be a mother, the desire to be successful, the desire to find love. And, the Tiddas discuss these issues at their ongoing book club, where nothing is off limits. Where all, eventually, becomes revealed.

Co-directed by Nadine McDonald-Dowd and Roxanne McDonald, this production pulses with optimism and comedic intent, a joyous way to kick start the theatre year, especially given what’s happening globally around the world. So there are plenty of laughs, but also questions which resonate about writing in black and white Australia, about reconciliation, and about the truths and lies, we often can’t help telling ourselves.

On opening night due to Covid, Louise Brehmer was unable to perform, so the role of Nadine was taken over, at short notice, by co-director Nadine Macdonald-Dowd with script in hand who did a sterling job and the one liners delivered with great comic timing by Perry Mooney kept us laughing even in the darker moments. Roxanne Macdonald who played Grandma and Mum brought a gentle grounding presence, while Sean Dow did a commendable job at playing all the male roles, of husband, brother, lover. Lara Croydon as  Izzy and Jade Lomas-Ronan as Xanthe both brought a heighten, if perhaps too similar approach to the terrain of dealing with motherhood. And Anna McMahon provided a steady tide of anguish to her role of Veronica.

There’s an obvious comradery among the actors that enhances and deepens the sisterly relationships, but I did feel that opening night nerves kept the performances at a tilt, with too little pauses to let emotional moments resonate. This also played out in the intimate solo moments when the characters take shelter under a beautiful lilac tree at the right of stage, it all happens so fast that if you blinked you’d miss it - like when Veronica slips her wedding ring off her finger, a pivotal, transformational moment in the character’s journey and one that needed just a little more time for us to absorb it. I’m sure however, as the season progresses, the play will settle into deeper, more nuanced performances aided by Wil Hughes sound design and compositions, along with Jason Glenwright’s subtle lighting.

Under the banner of Sydney Festival’s Blak Out program, TIDDAS is a wonderful, heart-warming, night at the theatre and well worth seeing.

Images (c) Stephen Wilson Barker

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