Music a triumph of the human spirit

Ladies for Hire
Written by Alison Quigan, directed by Jeff Kingsford-Brown, Centrepoint Theatre.
Reviewed by Lee Matthews.

Alison's back. Palmerston North's favourite playwright – and former Centrepoint Theatre artistic director – has served up the good Christmas bubbly with this one.

It's funny and forthright, and the humour has sufficient sting to keep the drama taut. And it's packed full of Palmy references. Poor old Woodville ...

St Mary's parish has a little choir of ladies who have sung together for years. Members come and go, but its backbone is indomitable, principled Harriet (Helen Moulder). Its newest member is naive young Shelley (Sarah Graham), just starting at Hairdressing College, fresh from the wilds of Waipukurau and alone and lonely in Palmerston North.

Mary Mac (Jennifer Ludlam) has a mental map of the city and its people that you only get by teaching at the same secondary school for 20-plus years. She's finding it difficult to adjust to the empty nest, now the kids have gone. The formidably competent and forever flurried Marijke Van Demon (Lyndee-Jane Rutherford) has the opposite problem. A houseful of kids, a son running off the rails and her Dutch mother-in-law about to visit.

Oven inspection, anyone?

The last of the choir is Mary O'Donnell (Kate Louise Elliott) - earthy, sexy, kind; she and her Ray run an auto-wrecking business together.

So Harriet's keeping the choir firmly in tune and they're loving the lamingtons and their irreverent comments about brides and bereaveds and they're just generally being friends forever when in comes pushy young Father Paul (Josh Harriman). He's a new broom trying to sweep dear old Father Peter (David McKenzie) into retirement with some nasty allegations, and the first thing he does is sack the choir.

Drama in high F! The choir tries to stay together; they book themselves out as Ladies for Hire, offering weekend entertainment. Mmm. There's a lot of experience expansion involving stag parties and gorilla-grams.

But the song turns sour. Harriet's made redundant, Ray has a stroke, Marijke's stinker son does something utterly awful. The choir's right out of tune. Is this the death march?

Music is a fascinating triumph of human spirit. It creates something bigger than itself; amplification. This choir shows that. The actors' voices all curl round each other beautifully, and snuggle up to the harmony. They're worth hearing. (The musical director is Roger Buchanan. He's done a good job.)

It's vintage Quigan, it's something special, and it's homegrown here in our Palmerston North.

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