Daylight Saving

Nick Enright was one of Australia’s best playwrights. And when the Enright family chose to collaborate with the Darlinghurst Theatre Company to stage and honour his work, they made a great decision. Their production of Daylight Saving, the first of three Enright plays to be staged over three years, is light but tightly paced. It’s, in a word, neat. Its Sydney-in-the-1980s setting means most of the laughs come from geographical and timely references (“I’m not some North Shore widow,” says Bunty, played by Belinda Giblin who skillfully keeps the character from caricature). The 1980s is ripe for laughter – we remember the décor and the shoulder pads and the music, assembled by Nate Edmondson – but it’s the timeless themes of the play that keep us interested, as well as Enright’s ear for dialogue, character and dramatic tension.

Tom (Christopher Stollery) and Felicity’s (Rachel Gordon) marriage is rocky; it’s their relationship that propels the play forward, as well as bookends it, although it is at times underdeveloped. Meanwhile the rich history of Felicity’s high school romance with Josh (Ian Stenlake) has just the right amount of detail and nuance to make it believable. This is a play about wanting things you can’t have, about loneliness and nostalgia, about being so very busy, and don’t all these things still apply now?

Eternity Playhouse to 30 Nov.