Review - Waking Up Dead

Waking Up Dead

By Trudy Hellier

Directed by Susie Dee

Performed by Caroline Lee

At fortyfive downstairs

4 to 14 September

Waking Up Dead is an exploration of the toxic effect of grief mixed with betrayal.  It is about a woman who discovers, in the wake of her husband’s murder, the life she has been living is not the construction she has invested in.

How deeply and satisfactorily one responds to this play will be individual it is an organic work that has been launched with integrity but three consummate talented women for a thinking audience.  My response is mixed.

There is a real courage involved in exploring and teasing out the events of our communal experience of shocking scenarios such as the murder of Herman Rockefeller a Melbourne millionaire who was living a double life.  With short gaps of time from the experience to the representation on stage the exploration can be very raw and risky compared to the more prescribed examination of something that is more fully resolved and framed in narrative by ‘the fullness of time.’

Trudy Hellier a successful actor has turned her hand to writing and she obviously has significant talent.  This is particularly evident in the early text of Waking Up Dead where the grieving widow (Caroline Lee) literally illustrates the era of her young life around the time she met her late husband.  There is a delightful poetic nature to the writing and performing of the early part of the work that doesn’t seem to be there towards the end as things flail and the protagonist’s perceptions and life fall apart. 

Suzie Dee’s staging is inspired and as director she appears to have set a strong framework that is perhaps clearer to the performer than the audience.  Sound bites (Ian Moorhead) are ambiguous and exactly where this woman is and whom she is talking to is hazy, it could be to the audience, it could be to the police it could be to herself, or perhaps it is all three?  

Caroline Lee is a consummate actor who embodies the characters she plays with convincing fineness.  She allows us into the crushed world of a woman who has lost herself, a woman humbled and reduced by the humiliation of betrayal and shattered by shock.  It would be very difficult not to be convinced by Lee’s poignant depiction of the characters melt down and fragile sensibilities.

However in examining the detrition of the surviving partner, in this generic story, I am not sure the work explores or even really touches on what we are most interested in.  I think it is actually the sensational that draws us to these stories not the fragmentation of a person who has been deceived through an amazing capacity for denial.  And yet self-denial is surely a universal characteristic and should therefore be an excellent subject for Theatre.

As a description and embodiment of a melt down it is perceptive, sad and fascinating.

On the whole something has not quite jelled – yet – or didn’t jell for me on opening night.  This work has left me questioning - floundering a little - though that may well be its intent.

Beautiful acting and clever direction and an extremely interesting story all come together strongly – but do they hit the mark?

See what you think!

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)