Book & Lyrics by Tom Gleisner
SUPREME EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Drama
The Pine Grove Aged Care Centre is in crisis. The inmates residents are unhappy. They are restricted to the centre, where activities are frequently cancelled and the food is barely worth living for. They have nothing to do except wait to die. Meanwhile, the centre’s administrator, Mrs MacIntyre (Christie Whelan Browne), faces unimaginable fiscal challenges.
Yes, the centre is in crisis. And that’s before principal protagonists, Rose (Evleyn Krape) and Finn (Slone Sudiro), even arrive at the centre.
Photo Credit – Sydney Theatre Company
Rose doesn’t want to be there. Just because she’s a menace on the roads and once set fire to her bedroom whilst smoking in her bed doesn’t mean she can no longer live independently.
Finn, somewhat counterintuitively, is a willing resident despite being a mere uni student. He saw a flyer at his university and leapt at the offer of free accommodation. All he has to do, in return, is perform some menial tasks around the centre. Or, at least, go through the motions of doing so.
Soon Finn and Rose are part of the centre’s community. A former actor (John O’May) who thinks his best days on the stage still lie ahead of him. An elegant woman (Jackie Rees) who loves to paint. Her widowed male admirer (John Waters) who stutters like a nervous teenager when he tries to talk to her. An old man (Eddie Muliaumaseali’i) who has lost the power of speech; or is it the will to speak? A petty thief (Maria Mercedes) who makes her getaway on a mobility scooter. And two dedicated nurses (Vidya Makan and Christina O’Neill) doing their best to fill the centre with light, even as the early evening shadows lengthen.
Photo Credit – Sydney Theatre Company
What follows is an endearing, life-affirming, story about living whilst you’re still alive. Of looking to the future even when your future is a fraction of your past. Of raging against the dying of the light.
The story reminds us that it’s never too late to, well, bloom. Or to re-bloom.
And like all great comedies, there’s light and shade. Plenty of laughter punctuated by poignant tears.
Theatre Etiquette
Just a quick shout-out to the gentleman sitting next to me during the show.
Theatre is a shared experience. And sometimes the strangers who have squeezed into the seat next to you enhance your enjoyment. You laugh at the same jokes. You gasp in two-part harmony. You somehow sense that your enjoyment of the production is shared by the stranger sharing your armrest. The experience can sometimes be so symbiotic that you feel like exchanging phone numbers on the way out. Or, at least, offering a friendly smile.
But it’s not always like that.
I didn’t mind the gentleman next to me bringing his takeaway coffee into the theatre, although the aroma of the roasted coffee beans did make me envious. What I could have done without, however, was his elbow in my ribs every time he raised the cup to his lips. And I could also have done without him fidgeting with the coffee cup – and flicking the plastic lid – for the next thirty minutes or so. If he thought he was flicking in time with the music, I can verify that he was not.
I am grateful, however, that he finally got the hint – conveyed through the medium of me diverting my attention to his hands rather than the stage – which caused him to put his empty coffee cup on the floor.
What My Eyebrows Told Me
Discourteous theatregoers notwithstanding, I loved every minute of Bloom. My eyebrows were fixed in a constant Supreme Arch, which is natural when you’re laughing, but less easy when your wiping happy tears from your eyes.
For more information about “Bloom”:
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