Brie Keatley
Content warning: discussion of domestic abuse, child abuse, and suicide.
What are Sisters For? is a deeply personal piece by writer and director Josie Eastwood that intimately retells the relationship between them and their late sister. The show has strong performances from the two actors and striking scenographic elements but overall feels too personal for me as an audience member to connect with completely.
What are Sisters For? is a deeply personal piece by writer and director Josie Eastwood that intimately retells the relationship between them and their late sister. The show has strong performances from the two actors and striking scenographic elements but overall feels too personal for me as an audience member to connect with completely.
Amelia (Mia Page) has recently moved down to Wellington and is visiting her older sister, Laura (Josie Torrington), at her flat. The sisters reminisce on how they supported each other through their traumatic childhood growing up under the abuse of their mother and stepfather. An important note for the team going forward: include domestic violence and child abuse content warnings in future as I am quite shocked as an audience member to see this onstage and not to have been warned about it. I also would have really liked to have seen some mental health resources in the programme or the foyer. It’s really important to consider the care of your audience when it comes to plays of this genre.
Eventually, we learn that Laura has actually taken her own life and what we are seeing is presumably happening in the head of Amelia as she deals with the grief surrounding her sister’s death. Page and Torrington give powerhouse performances of such heavy subject matter and I am impressed by how convincingly they both portray such grief. I sincerely hope there is a dedicated wellbeing member of their team that supports them after their performances as they both give so much.
The maximalist set design by Zalan Orban is perhaps one of my favourite parts of the show. Orban has sincerely brought a student flat to life on the Gryphon stage with Uber eats bags, Monster cans, and clothes strewn about the living room. I feel like I'm back at home. The lighting by Ezra Moki-Jones is also brilliant. I am a big fan of lighting designers who are not afraid to use bright colours in their stage washes and this is something Moki-Jones does often. Faith Holley’s sound design who expertly mixes jarring electronic music with well known tracks like Mitski’s Nobody. However, these great scenographic elements are not enough for me to become invested in the show.
While I applaud Eastwood for writing and directing such a vulnerable piece, I personally did not feel comfortable watching that amount of trauma processed onstage. The overall impact of the show felt more like it was for Eastwood to process their grief which is what made me unable to connect with the show overall. The writing is beautiful at times but I could not connect with what I was viewing as an audience member due to how personal the situation is and therefore took me out of the world of the play the team is trying to evoke. There’s nothing wrong with putting on shows about grief but when the creator has such a personal connection the show reads differently. I believe an outside eye or dramaturg looking over the script might have helped mitigate this. Although, I might be in the minority of this view as my companion and I were seemingly the only two people in the audience who were dry eyed.
Well done to the team at Wallflower Productions for putting on their first show. I can see a lot of care was put into it and although this particular show wasn’t for me, I do look forward to what they will do next with such a strong team.