HIGH EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Drama
A minimalist stage is brightly illuminated. Three or four large beach umbrellas stand in the middle distance. Somnolent Italian folk music plays in the background. A man selling colourful balloons strolls across the beach scene.
Dickie Greenleaf (Raj Labade) and his girlfriend, Marge (Claude Scott-Mitchell), luxuriate in their bathing gear on two reclined beach chairs. They’re accustomed to gracious living. There’s more than enough money in Dickie’s trust fund for him to take his time sucking the marrow out of life, before he’s compelled by life to get serious.
But Dickie’s aimless life of giddy excess, clothed in pastel linen, is about to change.
From stage right, emerges a man in a grey suit. A man with a ventriloquist’s voice but a face nobody remembers.
Tom Ripley (Will McDonald) is on a paid mission to bring Dickie back to New York to begin his life in the real world. Soon enough, however, Tom’s envy of Dickie will cause him to forget the mission Dickie’s father is funding and to join his idol in his life of aimless excess.
But how far will Tom’s envy take him?
Photo Credit – Prudence Upton | STC
What a Performance!
Arriving at Roslyn Packer theatre, I had very few expectations. I had seen the movie version of this story many years ago and remember thinking that one viewing was sufficient.
All I hoped for, as I took my seat in the theatre, was a story which would spark enough interest to ensure that the two-hour runtime, with no interval, did not drag like the eternity of an endless Italian summer.
I’ve seen enough theatre to know that can happen…
I need not have worried.
The talented Will McDonald had me hooked from the opening scene. He embodied his character so completely, and with such humanity, that my wife and I found ourselves rooting for him to get away with his misdeeds, even though The Talented Mr Ripley is one of the most reprehensible of all theatre reprobates.
A man consumed by envy. A man with little by way of moral compass. He wasn’t even that good at being bad.
Yet Will McDonald’s performance rendered him somehow sympathetic.
McDonald was joined by a strong ensemble cast, with special mention of Johnny Nasser, as Inspector Roverini, who stole every scene he was in.
What My Eyebrows Told Me
My wispy eyebrows sat in a low arch as the stage lights came up and the story began. By the time Tom Ripley arrived on the Italian beach, south of Naples, however, my eyebrows were fixed in a High Arch, with the occasional excursion into a Supreme Arch when key plot points unfolded.
For more information about the Talented Mr Ripley:
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