Neighbourhood Watch – MTC

Overview

There's a reason the suburbs are such great fodder for writers. The suburban street is a meeting point of public and private. It's a place where we recognise faces, but don't remember names; a place where new picket fences, flaking weatherboards, and unkept gardens work to keep our stories separate but end up uniting us in small and incidental ways. Neighbourhood Watch is grounded in these dual ideas — a story of lives once lived parallel colliding in small, incidental, and often meaningful ways.

Understandably, Neighbourhood Watch is first and foremost a character study. Once the barricades of suburban isolation are broken with a few awkward trips to the curb for bin night, we're let into the private lives of two purposefully opposing protagonists. There's Catherine (Megan Holloway), a struggling young actress and altogether flimsy stereotype of the troubled millennial. Then Ana (Robyn Nevin), a headstrong Hungarian migrant who lives alone with her ravenous German Shepherd, Bella, after surviving a World War and outliving two husbands. No prizes for guessing who steals the show.

Ana, based on a real acquaintance of the playwright Lally Katz, is a spectacularly loveable character. Always giving advice and sharing stories, her broken English and obtrusive confidence give dark humour to a character with a sad and familiar story. Ana is the neighbour we have all had at one time. The old lady across the street that wants to have "just one" coffee with you.

As Catherine deals with her own personal trauma she forms an unlikely friendship with Ana, becoming the child (or grandchild) she never had. Tales of Ana's past are then told expertly through the aid of minimal sets or props and a revolving stage which is utilised for dynamic shifts between scenes and great tension in one particular moment of conflict. More so, the lighting design by Damien Cooper is superb, creating both intimate moments of focus, and surreal looming shadows that linger above the figures as reminders of Ana's past oppressors. In comparison to such grandeur, Catherine's back story seems underdeveloped and, due to no real fault of Holloway, the young character gets lost alongside the magnificent presence cast by both Nevin and her feisty alter-ego.

Nonetheless, the relationship between the women feels both genuine and unique and the story is rich with the injection of Ana's stories. The remainder of the cast, too, add various forms of comic relief and authenticity through their varied portrayal of characters past and present.

The main problem, if you are going to have one, is with the obvious trajectory Katz shoots for here. The unlikely friendship of the main characters and the obvious focus on lesson learning will be heartwarming to some, and overwhelmingly twee for others. Though, even if you leave unsatisfied with the story, the masterful creation of character will make up for it. Nevin's bittersweet and fierce portrayal of Ana is undeniable — a show unto itself.