THEATRE
THREE LITTLE WORDS ★★
Joanna Murray-Smith
Melbourne Theatre Company
The Sumner, Southbank Theatre
Until May 27
Between her slick black farce Day One, A Hotel, Evening and the swingeing brilliance of Switzerland, Joanna Murray-Smith has been in excellent form. Perhaps she was due for a theatrical misstep, and Three Little Words certainly feels like one.
![Kate Atkinson, Catherine McClements and Katherine Tonkin in Joanna Murray-Smith's <i>Three Little Words</i>.](/web/20170427111759im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/p/s/4/3/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gvpr9l.png/1492917995535.jpg)
Marriage breakdown has been a recurrent goad to the playwright's imagination. It was the subject of Honour, and more recently Ninety. Revisiting the field, Murray-Smith seems unable to decide whether she wants to compose a barbed comedy or a psychodrama or a meditation on contemporary marriage, and her writing falls into a hole somewhere between these conflicting aspirations.
Four 40-somethings – two straight, two gay – have known each other since youth. Tess works in publishing, her husband Curtis is a high school teacher; Bonnie runs a prominent art gallery, her partner Annie's a masseuse. They have all fallen into comfortable, upper-middle-class coupledom, a lifestyle shattered when Tess and Curtis casually announce over dinner that they're splitting up.
Unlike Honour, the dissolution of this marriage is instigated by, rather than foisted upon, the wife, and the opening gambit might seem less contrived if Tess could articulate more specifically her reasons for wanting out. Vague discontent and a half-formed desire for self-discovery do not seem like sufficient motivation – Tess and Curtis still love each other, after all.
Nor does Tess go the whole Elizabeth Gilbert. There's no Eat, Pray, Love globetrotting, or exotic sex, or spiritual seeking. She uses her newfound "freedom" merely to smoke pot and dance around the room to Amy Winehouse, while believing (with a repellent sense of entitlement that borders on callousness) that Curtis is hers on a string and the separation can be temporary if she wants it to be.
Meanwhile, the spurned Curtis overcomes heartbreak in a predictable manner. Bonnie and Annie make misguided attempts to help in a situation that dives precipitously into acrimony, trying to avoid the contagion of bitterness and venality that plagues their straight mates in the process.
The main trouble lies in the script. Even Catherine McClements' attractive onstage presence can do little to salvage a character as unlikeable and half-thought-out as Tess. Peter Houghton plays Curtis in a mild-mannered way that makes his deliberate bastardry more galling. Mousy Annie doesn't stretch Kate Atkinson as an actor, save when the mouse roars.
The highlight is Katharine Tonkin's Bonnie. Portraying the most fully realised character, Tonkin shines as a fount of sardonic humour, as well as the main reservoir of emotional sincerity in the play. "Someone else might love you better," she admits in one of the few lines that ring true, "but no one could love you as much as I do."
Not that the play's dramatic use of a gay couple is unproblematic. More than a few lesbians I know are wearied by the tendency of their straight liberal friends to regard them as standard-bearers for conventional monogamy. That bias is especially evident here. And strangely, there's not a word about gay marriage: given how cursorily Murray-Smith explores other issues – the strict equality of liberal feminism, say – this is probably just as well.
Director Sarah Goodes, responsible for the superb recent production of Switzerland, flails in the face of this one. An overused revolve turns the show into a repetitive misery-go-round, with some annoying musical interludes that break the flow. Three Little Words isn't a dead loss, but given the high calibre of Murray-Smith's recent work, it's a disappointment.