Diane Wilson as Jean Baxter and Deirdre Wolhuter as Leila Russell
Have you heard the one about the Irish lesbian? She was ‘gaylick’ jokes Jean Baxter, a character in Fiona Coyne’s new comedy Careful which won Diane Wilson the Best Actress Award at this year’s Absolut Dublin Gay Theatre Festival.
With Careful, the 5th Artscape Spring Drama Season is off to its strongest start since Beethoven in Raptus opened the 3rd season. When writing plays increasingly seems to be a forgotten art, not only in South Africa, what a relief it is to have a new work (long overdue) by Fiona Coyne. Though a light, even somewhat blithe piece, it is pithy, witty, intelligent, skilful, engaging, touching and beautifully structured. Self-referential, often deprecatingly, it is above all intrinsically theatrical, using such devices as opening with a play within a play.
We meet Baxter (Wilson), an actress “so straight she could moonlight as a spirit level” in full stride rehearsing a lesbian part. Wilson is on top form – nuanced, frangible, versatile. She invites a theatre critic, Leila Russell (Deirdre Wolhuter), who is lesbian, to help her inhabit the rôle. A comedy of faux pas and a drama of self-discovery proceed.
The script, we learn, is a vehicle to resuscitate Baxter’s career, flagging in the new South Africa where ‘straight’ drama is on the wane, more so if you’re a white, classical actress with a RADA accent. Coyne includes several pointed remarks about the state of theatre criticism and the talents of many of our travelling players. There is delicious irony in the fact that this play is actually exactly what it purports to be about – an apt comment on the reality of the day, where the part is so often playing the actor.
