Suzy Goes See
Suzy Wrong
Venue: Qtopia (Darlinghurst NSW), Jul 10 – 27, 2024
Playwright: Noëlle Janaczewska
Director: Kate Gaul
Cast: Jules Billington
Images by Alex Vaughan
Theatre review
In The Past is a Wild Party, Noëlle Janaczewska looks back at her “chosen family history” by examining queer literature through the years, focusing on the often eclipsed experiences of women in the LGBTQ+ community. As she travels through libraries in Australia and in Europe, looking at works both legendary and obscure, Janaczewska reflects on her own life and loves, in what appears to be an exercise in healing, for the writer and for audiences of a similar persuasion.
It is an enchanting one-person show, directed with great passion by Kate Gaul, who brings wonderful elucidation to the meaningful complexions of the text. Performer Jules Billington is extraordinarily precise with each physical gesture and verbal inflection, making sure that we detect all the nuances of this soulful meditation on a collective phenomena that encompasses tribulation, trauma and triumph. There is a memorable and immense benevolence to Billington’s approach that thoroughly captivates, and that keeps us attentive with open hearts and minds.
An unexpectedly rich lighting design by Benjamin Brockman elevates the solo format, by introducing a compelling visuality to the production, with consistent vacillations to its emotional textures, but always beautiful in its depictions. Music by Madeleine Picard guides us on this sentimental journey, hypnotic with its melancholy, and perfectly attuned with the bittersweet musings of a person with wisdom to share.
It is within sapphic spaces that we can perceive especially clearly, an existence outside of the patriarchy. Power and its machinations may not entirely cease to exist in something like The Past is a Wild Party, but a certain disintegration of inequity can certainly be observed. No longer is there an obsession with domination over people, but a sense of togetherness in opposition to systematic oppression. We encounter something specific yet welcoming, with a capacity for the vastness of humanity, much like motherhood, that should come so natural, yet we know to be so rare.
