Couples

Here There and Everywhere Theatre Company (HT&E) brought their “one act comedy/drama”, Couples to the La Mama Courthouse for the last two nights of January. HT&E hail from Gippsland, Victoria and have been producing original work since 1993 which they perform locally and then occasionally tour to Melbourne.

Couples, written and co-directed by Phillip A Mayer, follows four couples as they enter counselling at the Paradise Valley Couples Retreat. The group counselling sessions, led by a husband and wife counselling team, provide the framework around which the couples are asked revealing questions and the tensions in their relationships are exposed. As the play went on this plot device became somewhat tired and the possibility of seeing the couples existing together outside of the counselling sessions or engaging in other activities while on the retreat was never explored. The writing may have also benefited from focusing on its comedic elements. The characters were rather shallow caricatures of the supposed stereotypes that may be seen to exist in ‘traditional’ husband and wife relationships: The millionaire businessman and his trophy wife, the judgemental career woman and her emasculated husband, the hard-drinking construction worker and his uptight wife. The characters never really developed beyond these clichés and so it felt uncomfortable and forced when the play attempted to introduce dramatic back stories such as a couple dealing with the death of a child.

La Mama Courthouse (finished)