Strange Interlude – Belvoir

Overview

We all live in the moment. That's not to say we're spontaneous — few of us are that — but we don't see the many iterations of ourselves that have been and will be when we're so thoroughly immersed in the present. We can't see the loves that come and go, the failures that dissolve to nothing, the great pains that, tarnished, become part of the furniture in our cluttered personal hallways.

That's what we tend to experience in the theatre, too: a single point on the chart, surveyed, studied, and mined for meaning. But perspective comes with its own truth. To have the whole of a life slapped down before us can be an innately powerful, piercing thing, and it's this that Belvoir's Strange Interlude harnesses so well. Constantly heartbreaking, relentlessly funny, and goddamn beautiful, it covers some 25 years in the life of Nina Leeds (Emily Barclay) and those close to her, starting with her bereavement, at 19, for fiance Gordon (Akos Armont), killed in war.

It takes a long time for things to look up for Nina, and she begins to think happiness is just something not meant for her. She blames herself and her professorial father (Anthony Phelan) for her pointless sexual abstinence, wishing she had a baby whose face would remind her of Gordon's. Taking up a nursing position, she instead sees his visage and suffering in those of wounded soldiers and tries to give them everything she'd previously withheld.

Her plummet to rock bottom is diverted by Sam (Toby Truslove), an ingenuous schmo who is utterly devoted to her, while her friends Ned (Toby Schmitz) and 'Uncle' Charles (Mitchell Butel), both in love with her in their own fashion, support the union. It's a match that, tragically, can never give Nina what she really needs and will saddle the group with devastating secrets.

So far, so soap opera. But Strange Interlude has a few heavy weapons in its arsenal. The divisive classic, written by American Eugene O'Neill and first staged in 1928, has been massively reworked by writer/director Simon Stone (Thyestes, The Wild Duck) into a modern, crisply unsentimental vernacular that's believable and charming. The play is famous for its use of asides, where the characters convey their innermost thoughts to the audience, and those that have been kept in as the play was whittled down to less than two hours (the original is five — five!) are welcome intrusions that either deepen the stakes of the drama or gratifyingly flip the meaning of actions and words spoken.

It's great spending any amount of time with Nina Leeds — strange, flawed, ordinary, special Nina Leeds — when she's brought to life by one of the country's best young actors. Barclay doesn't just act, she reacts, and it's mesmerising to watch. You empathise with her no matter whether she's breaking down with her whole body, betraying a strong facade with a glistening eye, or being bratty because sometimes there's those moods, too, okay? She steals every scene she's in, as she should.

Thoughtful touches to the staging and costume complete the piece. Two contrasting shower scenes stand out as revealing so much about the emotional world of the people in them, while the costumes easily communicate ageing in character as university prep evolves into unironic captains' blazers and op-shop tea dresses and flats become flowing silk blouses with a sensible heel.

Likely to move you to tears of several different kinds, Strange Interlude is a must-see. It's a play that says, "Don't be ridiculous; you've got years of love and heartbreak ahead of you still," and it says it both in its words and in its heart.