Review: Homemakers, Tower Theatre

Writers’ Room: Home

Review: Homemakers, Tower Theatre

Summary

Rating

40

Ok

Inspired direction makes a dystopian metaphor for home ownership come alive in a dolls house manufacturing plant

Workbench 300DH, in a non-descript doll house manufacturing hangar, is also the makeshift den where Karola, played by Sophia Crisafis, sleeps three hours between her day shift and her night shift and then three more hours between her night shift and her morning one, totalling six hours sleep every 24 hours.

Karola has a daughter but cannot afford to live with her because her salary and overtime pay only allow her to rent a one-bedroom flat. She desperately needs to get as much overtime as possible and attract as many productivity bonus points as possible to increase her pay just enough to make that extra room a reality.

Devan (Thisakya Dias), is a new joiner at the plant and she, too, can ill afford her rent. She dreams of upgrading from a six-person room-share to a studio flat of her own. Devan is allocated to workbench 300DH and, under the tutelage of Karola, learns all the tricks to complete as many dolls houses as possible and achieve as many productivity points as possible, including saving commute time by sleeping under the workbench. Unlike Karola, however, Devan draws the line at popping amphetamines, preferring instead to undercut her former mentor and sabotage her application for a higher paying role at the plant, securing it for herself.

Meantime, the dolls house design has been upgraded from a detached two-storey house to a cottage look, inclusive or garden and pond, which is exactly Karola’s dream house, designed by her in her failed application for a promotion to the design department.

We do not know if Devan has the promotion for sure, nor do we know if Karola manages to secure an extra room for her daughter but we do discover that overwork and pill abuse had been the cause of a previous co-worker’s death in the plant’s toilets. 

The script is well constructed, and the dialogues and the acting are credible, if unsettling. The direction is also masterful in creating, with limited props, a sense of foreboding and oppression, using off-stage productivity announcements and pet companions booking reminders to great effect.

What appears to be missing, however, are moments of relief from bleakness. No theatre experience should ever amount to undiluted self-flagellation. In craving moments of lightness, one is reminded of the baseline trick in the greatest canon of social realism and class struggle theatre: Bertolt Brecht’s work is shot through with memorable Kurt Weil songs and, often drunken, slapstick, dance routines. Jane South is clearly a writer who is attuned to some of society’s harshest tragedies and hits her viewers with high-impact scenes and dialogues. She should now adapt her style just enough to make her viewers come back for more.

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Homemakers is playing as part of a series of shorts as part of Writers’ Room: Home. The other plays are Difficult to Describe, Understand or Measure, An IQ Test for my Birthday and When You Go to Ireland.

Written by: Janet South
Directed by: Feiyang Yang
Produced by: Tower Theatre Writers’ Room

Writers’ Room: Home plays at Tower Theatre until 16 December. Further information can be found here.