REVIEW: The Performance by Claire Thomas

The Performance is Clever. I mean capital ‘C’ Clever.

The premise is: During a searing summer of bushfires, a Melbourne theatre stages a performance of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days. The play itself is absurd and cryptic and we view it in turn through the eyes of three women in the audience.

Claire Thomas

Each woman is digesting the play’s enigmatic plot — a woman is trapped in a mound and talks about her day with her husband — while also reflecting on her life. Her day, conversations she has had, problems she needs to solve.

Margot is an aging academic who is facing the challenges of being a middle-aged woman trying to hold onto a full time teaching role while her husband suffers dementia.

Ivy is a wealthy philanthropist. The world sees her as privileged but she hasn’t always been. She reflects on the challenges of her cultured and powerful position in contrast with the struggles of her difficult childhood.

Summer is a young theatre usher. She’s working this shift as she worries about her girlfriend who is stuck in the bushfire zone.

At times, the play’s themes reflect the musings of the women. At other times, they seem to drift into their own worlds, distracted by their thoughts. We are reminded of how the performing arts can be sometimes totally immersive, and at other times be a canvas for personal reflection — a kind of group meditation with the artists as backdrop.

What is most Clever about this book, though, are the characters.

Claire Thomas portrays these women of different ages and stages in life with sensitivity and insight, weaving their stories together with the narrative of the play like instruments in an orchestra. In doing so, she provides a unique portrait of what it means to be a woman in Australia today.

—The Performance by Claire Thomas (Hachette Australia) is out now.

The Performance

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by Claire Thomas

As bushfires rage outside the city, three women watch a performance of a Beckett play.

Margot is a successful professor, preoccupied by her fraught relationship with her ailing husband. Ivy is a philanthropist with a troubled past, distracted by the snoring man beside her. Summer is a young theatre usher, anxious about the safety of her girlfriend in the fire zone. As the performance unfolds, so does each woman's story...

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