“What do they do all day in Sydney? Stare at the water?” It is mischievous to single out this line of sassy, intercity rivalry, uttered with a tart exasperation by Heide matriarch Sunday Reed in the Melbourne Theatre Company show named for her.
And yet, it gets to the nub of the Melbourne story celebrated here, where Sydney, or rather Sidney, is almost an antagonist. Portrayed with exhilarating panache by an outstanding Nikki Shiels, Sunday is a luminous presence. A woman before her time, she helped shape Australian modernism by founding the artistic commune Heide on a former dairy farm on the city’s then-rural edges.
Under her guidance, it became a bohemian refuge where art and love collided in tempestuous eddies by the Yarra. A place destined to become the modern art museum of the same name. Shiels is an actor of such calibre that she swung standing in for Eryn-Jean Norvill during her celebrated turn in The Picture of Dorian Gray.
We hang on her every word here. In the opening moments of Sunday, she looks out to us, the audience, standing in for what we come to realise is a Sidney Nolan portrait of her at Heide long after he has abandoned her and this place.
Describing in great detail the specific colour of Melbourne’s sky and grass, it’s a provocation to her eventually adopted son Sweeney (Joshua Tighe) – born to Heide resident artist Joy Hester (Ratidzo Mambo) – to look closer. To see and feel more.
Sunday was unable to have children, and the play makes much of art as her surrogate, even more so than Sweeney. She adored her second husband, John, depicted here with loyal stoicism by Matt Day (North by Northwest). She also took Sidney Nolan as a lover, with the inimitable Josh McConville (Death of Salesman) stepping into this role.
Playwright Anthony Weigh settles on this ménage à trois as the basis of an almost three-hour work of historical fiction directed by Sarah Goodes (Cyrano). It paints between the lines in a tale that roughly spans WWII, though focused firmly on the Heide home front, where war is over artistic and emotional independence.
Weigh perhaps over-eggs McConville’s witty introductory scene with a salvo of mimicked banter bounced back and forth between the Reeds and Sidney as the latter shows up unannounced and dishevelled, seeking patronage. The class divide hangs in the air as the Reeds somewhat snootily unpick his affected exaggeration of the poor artist's identity. And yet it’s clear that Sunday immediately recognises the promise in his sketches of the city and an unmistakable frisson between them.
Many argue Sunday’s guiding hand is unmistakable in Nolan’s Ned Kelly series. That is brought to life here as she suggests a splash of red while he works away at their dining room table, all the while trying to pick the precise nature of her relationship with her husband and if there’s room for him too.
McConville relishes this ‘it’s complicated’ dance, with Day doing good work in the quieter role. Under Goodes’ steady, unfussy direction, the first act mostly reads like a bracing monologue for the remarkable Shiels, occasionally interrupted.
Perhaps a tighter play could have discarded the rest altogether in favour of a one-woman show. While prior knowledge of the Heide circle will certainly boost enjoyment of Sunday, it isn’t required. Weigh more or less excludes the other key players, losing some of what made this artistically incestuous place unique, including their political alignment with the Communist Party.
Mambo, as gifted artist Joy, is particularly hard done by, reduced to a footnote appearing in unspoken glimpses in the first act and a plot point propping up an ailing Sunday in the second. It’s a perplexing decision, as is the loss of focus on Sunday in the final act, becoming a more passive presence as the boys bicker over her.
It’s also a shame, for a work so invested in the dramatic lives of artists, that designer Anna Cordingley’s set is so dreary. The stage, already too large by half and dwarfing the cast in a work that should be intimate, is a minimalist shell daubed with a grey, concrete-like smear.
While there are subtle hints of metaphorical playfulness in the exploded structure of a crumbling home that’s missing one wall and the long shallow window to the rear evoking Ned Kelly’s helmet eyehole, they’re too coy. It’s a welcome relief when the autumnal canopy of a long-promised oak tree finally offers a flourish of colour in the second act.
If Sunday loses its way a little in its overlong runtime, it is through no fault of Shiels, who shines bright as the dappled Melbourne sunlight. Her performance, painted with precision, is worth the ticket regardless.
