Approximately 2pm August 31st 1997
Note: This review is from 2007
So, it’s something of a departure to find that Approximately 2pm August 31st 1997 features absolutely no lesbians. Quit the opposite, in fact, as it’s about a long-term married couple.
Not happily married, mind. She is a fierce harridan, knocking back happy pills and booze for breakfast as she wastes her days with crosswords and fags. He is a pathetic, henpecked creature forever seeking solace from this marital misery in the sanctuary of his shed.
They’re one-dimensional characters, with Marianne relentlessly shrieking selfish, belittling commands and put-downs, which become increasingly grating on the ear, while Norman is a shell of a man, his soul long sucked dry.
The time of the title comes from the time in Australia when Princess Diana was fatally injured in Paris. The news of the crash, and subsequent death, somehow exposes the rift in Marianne and Norman’s now-loveless marriage. She can’t see how Diana’s death will change anyone’s life; he feels like he’s lost the only friend he has left.
There’s not a huge amount of comedy in this. The insults that flow between them are wearisome and it’s only the extent of poor Norman’s idolisation of the Princess that comes as even the slightest surprise, and even then it’s not mined for anything but a couple of cheap laughs.
The actors do what they can with the limited script. Phil Roberts captures the resigned slouch of man whose dreams are long dead; while Joanne Davis has little to do but whine.
The programme handed out at the delightful La Mama fringe theatre explain this one-act play has been around for a few years in various incarnations. Why it’s being revived now – and why, especially, as part of a comedy festival – is unclear.
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Melborune, April 2007
Review date: 1 Jan 2007
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett