In Flame

by

Charlotte Jones


Cast & Crew
Brigid Dolan
Kirsty Kiloh
Keira McKeown
Jess Newing
Michael Teulon
Helen Tonkin


Hecate - Design

Roz Riley - Director
In Flame
In Flame
The SBW Stables Theatre, Nimrod St, Kings Cross


Reviews
In Flame was one of two works that won playwright Charlotte Jones the Critics Circle Award for most promising playwright in 2000. The Australian premiere is a joint production by the Factory Space Fringe theatre and Uft Productions at the SBW Stables Theatre, directed by Roz Riley. The action is in two time frames and covers a century in the life of the women in a family. Most of the casr members play a different character in each of these time frames. The paired characters are completely different yet they form parallels and embody the changes and the unexpected similarities between the two eras. Helen Tonkin plays Granma, a victorian matriarch, and Annie, an alzheimers patient, who shows us the pathos and wisdom of her age. Brigid Dolan is the foxy Alex, Annie's daughter and Kirsty Kiloh is Livvy, Alex's greataunt. heir seducersa are smoothly played by Jess Newing, while Michael Teulon as the halfwitted Arthur and as Annie's nurse, James, captures the vulnerability of the hapless "nice guy". All the performances are a success but the stand-out is Keara McKeown. The Dublin-trainned actress ahs a larger-than-life presence and is touching and comical both as livy's slow little sister Clara and Alex's maudlin and sarcastic flatmate Clootie, There were also some of those magical moments that can electrify a theatre. The play is not perfectly written, but it is thought-provoking, contains some fine drama and leaves many haunting images.
Penny Durham, Entertainment Section, 25th May 2002

How far have women come in the feminist century? Is freedom of choice a myth? Are women prone to sabotaging their own happiness? Charlotte Jones’s In Flame (1999) is not the feminism so often caricatured as resentful polemic, but instead a wonderfully subtle, thoughtful easy-to-like play. Two compare-and-contrast stories unfold in parallel, one set in 1908, on taking place now: both involving women making difficult, possibly lovesick choices. For the most part the play is richly strange, comic and compassionate. There’s menace, too, although not all these qualities shine though in Roz Riley’s direction. Among a cast of varying abilities, there’s excellent doubling work from Keara McKeown as an “idiot girl” in the last century and someone unlucky in love today.
Colin Rose, Sun Herald 2nd June 02

In Flame, a joint production of The Factory Space and Uft Productions, despite strong performances the play was not living and breathing and felt piloted by its creator, the British playwright Charlotte Jones, who recently received the London Critics’ Circle “Best New Play” award for Humble Boy. In Flame blends two stories – one set in 1908, the other in 2000 – connected by ancestry and the heartlessness of men. The earlier tale, based in Yorkshire, includes Gramma and her granddaughters, Livvy and Clara. The other contemporary England concerns Alex, Gramma’s great granddaughter who shares a flat with Clootie. Keara Mckeown shines as the dryly-neurotic Clootie and simple-headed Clara, and Helen Tonkin is very convincing as sharp-toughed Gramma and Alex’s dying mother. Kirsty Kiloh’s depiction of Livvy, a woman trapped between duty and fate, is excellent. But this witty and poetic play suffers a lack of flow”: the links between times frames seems disjointed despite strong acting.
Lenny Ann Low, Sydney Morning Herald 5th June 02