Hayley Pearl and Martin Ashley Jones dazzle for their Perth debut in Paper Doll, a dark and compelling performance written in response to Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge. The one-act play by Perth playwright Katy Warner transplants the complex relationship between that play’s protagonist, Eddie, with his wife’s orphaned nice Catherine, from 1950s Brooklyn to a contemporary Australia.
Positioned around a reunion between the two characters many years later, Paper Doll is gripping from its opening moment: where Jones’s Eddie enters a darkened set to the sound of pouring rain. He is disheveled, unshaven, contrite and nervous. Pearl’s Catherine is tightly coiled energy: fragile, vulnerable and conflicted. The actors find their melody rapidly, presenting an emotionally-fuelled connection whose backstory evolves gradually, the script shrewdly holding back the specifics of the duo’s relationship right to the end and leaving much to allusion and possibility.
As the audience navigates the space between what is revealed and what is suggested from the two characters’ troubled past, we are free to develop empathy for each – which deepens our experience of their emotional trajectory as it spins from tender to explosive. It is a powerful and unsparing performance. The Blue Room’s snug theatre space and lowered stage combine with a stripped-back set to create an intimacy which empowers the characters’ searing interaction with one another.
Paper Doll’s script is taught and cleverly constructed, presenting a narrative that keeps you guessing right to the final minute and absorbing, complex characters which are both profoundly flawed and achingly human. The actors present utterly convincing performances, carrying moments in the dialogue which feel excessively bleak and playing off one another with a seamless chemistry.
But the heat of this play is its physical tone. The opening of a gift, a playful baring of teeth, a clumsy waltz – all seethe with tension. In its continuous flow of movement, the interplay between these characters has the physicality and poetry of a dance and the play’s few props – a towel, a plastic bag, a bowl of chips – are all charged with meaning.
Paper Doll is written by Katy Warner and directed by Lucy Clements, with sound design by Clemence Williams. The play is showing at The Blue Room Theatre from 12th – 16th February as part of Fringe World Festival and Summer Nights.
Kim Kirkman, Theatre Now Perth
