The Ham Funeral - Review

The Ham Funeral by Patrick White is playing at the New Theatre.  It was written in 1947 but it could have been written yesterday.  Patrick receive the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1973 and has written several plays and novels.
The play centres around its characters and location rather than plot. It is set in a seedy boarding house in London. A young naive poet (Rob Baird) lives there, who is trying to find the meaning of life. Mrs Lusty (Lucy Miller) the landlady tries, though not very hard, to seduce him. But tragedy strikes as Mr Lusty (Zac McKay) dies on the kitchen floor, hence the Ham Funeral.  The whole play is slightly surreal and even reminded me of the Addams Family. Patrick in his earlier works was greatly influenced by DH Lawrence and Thomas Hardy which explains the slightly bizarre moments and long soliloquies. I think most people enjoyed the scene with the two ladies of the night (Brielle Flynn and Karina Sindicich), their costumes were very good you could feel the grime and dirt. The play does contain quite a bit of humour, some audience members did find it more amusing than others!
The production and set design was very good, it was fairly simply design but very effective.  The use of red curtaining helped set the scene too.  Lucy was very strong as Mrs Lusty which helped keep the play moving and entertaining.

It is a peculiarly play, and it won't be to every ones taste, personally I rather liked the intrigue and idea that you can never be too sure what goes on behind closed doors.

The Ham Funeral plays until 25 May at the New Theatre - www.newtheatre.org.au

Photograph © Bob Seary