It was its setting and structure that attracted me to Claire Thomas’ The Performance, although that brightly coloured jacket played some part. A clever design which fits the novel well. As its title suggests, the backdrop for Thomas’ novel is a Melbourne theatre where three women are watching a performance of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days in which Winnie first appears half-submerged in a mound of grass into which she sinks further in the second act while Willie is largely offstage. Meanwhile a bushfire rampages through the mountains overlooking the city.
Perhaps she should have been on the pill, to be sure, but she couldn’t stand what it did to her bust and to her personality – enlarged them both, in ways that were uncomfortable and difficult to manage
Margot arrives a little late. It’s her regular Friday night visit to the theatre, a place she comes as much to think as to watch the play. She’s a literature professor, fresh from an uncomfortable discussion with the dean about a retirement she resists taking. Once she’s ushered in all the late arrivals, Summer can sit down. She’s a drama student, grappling with anxiety about the environmental disaster our planet is hurtling towards. Ivy is rekindling her love of Beckett, the hero of her student years when she was a bright scholar working catering gigs to get by. Things are very different now: Ivy’s a philanthropist courted by fundraisers. These three encounter each other in the interval: Ivy delighted to be reunited with Margot for whom she was a star student but puzzled by the bruises she glimpses on Margot’s arms, then chatting with Summer as she serves the fussy canapes Ivy remembers all too well and inadvertently offending her. By the end of the performance, as Beckett’s Winnie sinks further into the ground and Willie seems incapable of rescuing her, much has been revealed about these three very different women.
But then things happened to Ivy, and she happened to things, and the huge whirling grey of complex experience fogged her crisp worldview, and humbled her
It’s a long time since any of us has enjoyed an evening at the theatre but I still remember that feeling of anticipation, settling in your seat, sometimes slightly irritated by the coughing of a fellow audience member or the territorial negotiation of the armrest, all vividly evoked here. Thomas structures her novel so that we spend a good deal of time in Margot, Summer and Ivy’s heads, bringing them together neatly at the interval before they return to their seats. Throughout it all runs the theme of climate change which, like Winnie increasingly submerged as Willie ignores her, is happening right outside our front doors while we fail to change our ways. I thoroughly enjoyed this witty, perceptive novel which hangs together beautifully as its characters unfold their stories through thoughts, memories and reflections, occasionally offering their views on the play enacted in front of them. I’d not come across Thomas’ debut, Fugitive Blue, but plan to get my hands on a copy soon.
Weidenfeld & Nicolson: London 9781474616980 304 pages Hardback
Excellent! I bought this just last week (and am looking forward to my first performance in over a year by Melbourne Theatre Company within the next couple of weeks).
I so enjoyed it, Kate. Quite envious of your returning to the theatre. I know that’s on the cards here for the summer but we’ll have to see how things go. Have you read Fugitive Blue?
This sounds brilliant – and I do miss the theatre so that setting appeals to me too 🙂
I loved the way she captured those small details such as the arm rest negotiation! Conjured up the experience so well.
How I miss the theatre – sigh. This does sound very clever, and quite an undertaking to include Happy Days, I think I would have opted for something more straightforward! I agree about the jacket – stunning.
Me, too. I’m not familiar with the play but looking it up led me to interpret it as a climate change reference: Willie failing to pay the disaster-hit Winnie any attention. Lovely to have you back, btw!
Thanks Susan – lovely to be back reading your excellent reviews!
I miss the theatre but not my fellow theatre-goers!! This sounds great, Susan, although I am not familiar with Happy Days – would that hamper my enjoyment of the novel do you think?
I’m not either, Liz. I had to look it up so I don’t think it would detract from your enjoyment at all. I know what you mean about fellow theatre-goers. It only takes one…
Susan I reviewed this also today but I think ( no pun intended) that I was very much the wrong audience. The writing was excellent but it was just a little too left of centre for me. I’m not familiar with any of Beckett’s work and I do think that was a major disadvantage to me.
Ah! That’s a shame. I did have to look up the play as it’s not one I know. I hope your next read works better for you, Mairéad.
No, haven’t read Fugitive Blue but have heard of it.
I just put in an order for this one – I love the theatre, love Happy Days and love multiple narratives!
It sounds like Thomas wrote this one for you, Cathy!
A theatre is such a brilliant backdrop for a novel. How I miss going to the theatre. Great review.
Thank you. Yes, it works really well. I miss the cinema, too. All those things we took for granted.
I was interested in this one when you listed it in an earlier post. Now that I’ve read this full review, I’m determined to pick it up as soon as I can!
I hope you enjoy it as much as I did, Kara
I was just reading a review of this in the weekend paper (or, was it last weekend? who knows!) and thought the concept sounded lovely. It would require such tight, considered plotting/structure.
It’s a great idea, isn’t it, and Thomas handles it so deftly.
What a good idea for a setting. Especially right now when many of us are missing the theatre!
She catches the atmosphere of a performance so well. You can almost here those rustling programmes!