Dunstan Playhouse. State Theatre Company South Australian and Sydney Theatre Company. 9 Aug 2022
Post-covid and in an era of funding cuts and bureaucratic bungling, most of the teachers of West Vale Primary hang out in the parking lot, leaving just a ragged core to frequent the run-down old staff room.
Returning from school holidays, the jaded veteran teacher Pat Novitsky shakes a cockroach out of the kettle before hammering loose the contents of a jumbo Nescafe can and heaping five spoonful’s of granules into a cup. She sighs as if its nectar on the first sip. The audience is already laughing because fey fellow teacher Denise Hart has preceded her by doing a horrified once-over of the room before disappearing into the Ladies. Catherine McClements and Susan Prior respectively have broken the comic ice with some lovely mime setting the scene and the mood for this Sydney Theatre Company and State Theatre Company SA co-production of Angela Betzein’s Chalkface.
The title, one discovers, references the “coal face” of teaching as opposed to makeup.
While there is a lot to laugh at in this play, loaded as it is with cornball clichés of the trials and tribulations of long-suffering but ever dedicated state school teachers, it is, in fact, a sad and disturbing portrait of a disintegrating system.
Novitsly’s best friend Sue, a fellow veteran teacher, dropped dead as they began their dream trip to Hawaii. Her funeral in school holidays was ignored by colleagues. Novitsky brings memorial ritual to the staff room along with Sue’s ashes. Playwright Betzein has fun with this - and so does the audience.
The play rolls through all manner of tropes, especially in introducing the new millennial teacher, Anna Park, bright and cocky with her Masters degrees in neuroplasticity and child behaviour. She is embodied and well developed by Stephanie Somerville. The headmaster is more of an administrator. He’s nick-named “Thatcher” for his economic rationalist policies and, played by Nathan O’Keefe with a wee trendy man-bun, he’s buck-passing and hands-off. His staffroom offsider is the over-aptly named Cheryl Filch, played by Michelle Ny. She commands the supplies, the shredder, and the school PA over which she loves to issue exquisitely inept pronouncements. She is the tight-fisted school villain.
The sports teacher Steve, played by Ezra Juanta, has been on compo following an injury caused by the school’s pupil nemesis, Hurricane Little. He now suffers from paranoia.
No one wants Hurricane and his perilous pranks in their class, so the smug newbie offers to take him. And so the school year rolls on, its tides and terms marked by flags and bunting strung across the staff room and also, by zany little dance vignettes from Denise, the kindie teacher. She is pregnant, so her growing stomach also shows the passage of time.
The play's funny/nightmarish denouement is in Book Week when everyone is themed up, Denise as the many-armed Hungry Caterpillar. To this end, designer Ailsa Paterson has had lots of fun with costumes and, indeed, overall with a scrupulously detailed archetypal old-school staffroom complete with labelled pigeon holes, an ideas box, broken hot water system, and a flotsam of old furniture. Mark Shelton brings this all to vivid life with a gorgeous lighting plot, complete with inefficiencies and blackouts while Jessica Dunn’s sound and music taps right into the spirit of primary schools and is a delight in its own right. Indeed, it’s an altogether good production team and director Jessica Arthur sustains the cast’s timing and interaction to a school bell tee.
Chalkface is not a great play. But, it is a nice play. Its one hour and 45 minutes passes swiftly and its portrayal of the ravaged education system gives serious pause for thought. It dares a spot of didacticism and labours the word “pedagogy” to underscore today’s decline in depths of teaching of language and critical thinking.
While the performances all are pretty shmick, it is Catherine McClements as the world-weary doyen who steals the show and our hearts.
Samela Harris
When: 10 to 20 Aug
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: statetheatrecompany.com.au
