Ali Harper is currently touring Bombshells – a one-woman show by Australian writer Joanna Murray-Smith. Harper has previously performed the show in 2007, receiving Chapman Tripp’s Actress of the Year award in 2008. The play sets out to explore the modern woman through the portrayal of six female characters in a newly honest and witty light.
For me, however, the play was disappointing. Instead of revealing a new intimate truth, each character merely embodied a tired, superficial stereotype presented to be laughed at rather than listened to. Harper is clearly a skilled performer with a good command of the stage and a range of abilities. However, in my view, her talent was let down by the writing. For me the play had no clear purpose in mind. It was as though it was caught between a parody and more serious reflection. A play can certainly be both, but unfortunately Bombshells was neither. The audience seemed to enjoy it , which left me wondering whether there was something I missed. It failed to make me laugh or think.
The characters included a bride who reveals that she is marrying her husband for the dress (“THE DRESS!” she cries over and over) and a safe exit from the horrors of singledom. Another was a mother who opened the show with an excruciatingly laboured internal monologue chronicling all the unfiltered anxieties of her day (“Need a coffee”, “I’m a terrible mother”, “Drop off DVDs” etc. etc.). Add to the list an alcoholic lounge singer, whose songs are inexplicably punctuated with talk of her divorce and her daughter who hates her. For me, these characters were so pedestrian and one-dimensional that they failed to achieve anything entertaining.
There is certainly great potential in presenting ordinary characters to an audience. It can be very valuable to examine the unexamined life, but surely with the aim of forming some greater understanding. The elevation of the ordinary must make us aware of what goes unnoticed and the importance of the unique narrative that is written by every life. However, these characters failed to achieve that level of authenticity or profundity. They showed no development, no uniqueness, nothing unexpected. This is not to say that theatre has to reveal something in order to be valuable. Perhaps the point of Bombshells is to entertain, but I felt that in this respect too it failed to meet expectations.
With two characters there was a certain level of pathos which I had hoped would develop into something more. There was the middle-aged woman who had been left by her husband giving a talk on cactii and the widow reading to a blind man. These characters I found slightly more engaging, and they had some personal details that gave them a more authentic quality. However, as their stories unfolded, unfortunately both went the way of mockery over exploration.
I do think that Bombshells was trying to do something more than provide light entertainment. It was as though it kept signposting that something profound was about to happen, but it never arrived. One of the interesting effects of a one-actress show that presents a string of female stereotypes is the implication that it is somehow representative of womankind as a whole. When combined with the fact that these characters were largely superficially rendered, it carried with it the idea that women in general are equally one-dimensional. For me it was a waste of the opportunity to have a singular woman with a captive audience for an hour and a half. If it succeeded in being funny it may not been left me with that regret. Harper is clearly very talented, I just wish she had something more to work with.
