Fremantle's women take centre stage
Waterfront Women
Deckchair Theatre Company
Directed by Angela Chaplin, written by Marcus Hughes
Victoria Quay, Fremantle, until November 29
Regional WA tour to December 6
Review by Anne O'Callaghan
The Port of Fremantle marks its centenary in 1997 and, says Deckchair Theatre's Angela Chaplin, it time the stories of the women of the port were heard.
Waterfront Women features the considerable talents of actors Kate Hall, Rosemarie Lenzo and Kate Mulvaney and the original music of Kavisha Mazella. The play unfolds amidst shipping containers, cargo nets, ropes and pulleys on the wharf at Victoria Quay, and the audience is cast back in time as we huddle together against the cool sea breeze while seagulls squawk rudely overhead.
We enter the lives of the women of the wharf — the wives and lovers, the barmaids and working girls — who provided the support which enabled the men to perform paid labour and sustain the strikes which won decent wages and conditions.
Chaplin states that the play takes a deliberately non-documentary approach, attempting to create an understanding of and an involvement in the stories of the women.
We meet the young woman left waiting, in the darkness of her kitchen, for her husband to return to celebrate their first Christmas together after he is waylaid at the pub; the barmaid who listens to the men at the end of the day and entertains them with her boisterous folk renditions; the young woman who is sent away to the convent to bear the child she never sees and returns to the town to become one of the local working girls.
We see strikes and struggles from the point of view of the women who wait anxiously at home for news and who proudly march in the victory parades.
This play is both powerful and moving, weaving a delicate balance between the desperation and difficulties of the times and the strength and solidarity which were integral to the survival of the women and their families.