Chalkface by Angela Betzen: Teaching Is A Risky Business ~ Theatre Review

[THEATRE ~ WORLD PREMIERE ~ AUS] Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre, Tue 9 Aug. Pat’s been teaching for 35 years and has just lost her only friend on the staff of Water Vale Primary School. She’s as jaded as the rundown staffroom that greets her on her return for another school year. Fresh faced Anna is on her first teaching gig and can’t wait to meet the students – even the tough nuts. The school principal bounces in full of cynical enthusiasm and trots out the appropriate hashtags to ‘gee’ everyone into positive action. #teacherscare. Lots of amusing and familiar staff room banter ensues around coffee cups, smelly fridges, who sits where, and stationery allowances and it becomes clear that Pat and the principal don’t like each other. The two remaining teachers on staff, Denise and Steve, seem broken and disturbed beyond repair and one can imagine merciless students finishing them off in a term. Still, as the school year progresses everyone seems to be more or less surviving. Anna’s optimism remains undaunted until she stumbles across evidence of anomalies with the school finances. Someone has been embezzling school funds. From there everything descends into chaos and it all comes to a head on book week dress-up day when everyone’s alter egos are revealed. Well known to Australian stage and screen audiences, Catherine McClements is the star of the show as Pat Novitski. Her perfectly timed taunts and barbs come thick and fast in a splendid performance that commands attention. Nathan O’Keefe is wonderful as the irritatingly annoying school principal feigning false positivity, and Michelle Ny seemed born to play the part of the stationary Nazi and admin officer, Cheryl Filch. A riotous penultimate scene propels the plot to an unlikely dramatic conclusion that no one sees coming. Like so many police officers in TV crime series, it seems teachers are a fatally flawed bunch who can never be sure if they’re achieving anything of value. But you can’t begrudge them for trying. Someone’s gotta do it. An entertaining expose of the risky world of the school teacher! 4 stars Michael Coghlan Chalkface continues at the Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre, at various times, until Sat 20 Aug. Bookings at State Theatre Company and Ticketek. Click HERE to purchase your tickets. #ClotheslineMag #STCofSA