As the old adage goes; Grief's awkward moments are comedy's uncomfortable truth. Nowhere is this more evident than in ‘Colder Than Here’; an exploration of how mourning begins before the goodbye. It confronts the heavy hitters – family and the search for control in the face of mortality. Thanks to the caustic bite of The Midlands - it’s more bittersweet than despairing.
Myra plans her funeral with unflinching candour, her cancer a harsh reality. Her family grapples with her unvarnished honesty and emotional exposure, as she offers a liberating bluntness only someone with nothing to lose can afford. This difficult path forces them to confront life's limits, love's impermanence, and the unknown.
Playwright Laura Wade tackles the unlikely fusion of heartbreak and irreverence with a black humour. But her ambitious effort sometimes falters in finding a consistent balance between pathos and punchlines. Often veering between sitcom-like levity and dramatic gravity. Is this an exercise in confronting death's taboos through the macabre? Or simply showcasing Myra's defence mechanisms?
While Wade may aim to normalise discussions about death, there were many missed moments where the complexity could have been explored. The narrative's timescale, spanning several months, felt condensed. Pivotal moments and emotional shifts were cut short, accelerated or disjointed. More of a series of snapshots, resulting in the audience never really understanding this family's inner journey.
Myra's family, quintessentially middle-class and affable, is set against Michael Hankin's effective backdrop – a living room merged with a forest, where grass bursts through the lush, mossy carpet. Here, domesticity and nature converge, fusing the delicate dance between life and death. The cast does a stellar job adding layers and grounding the material, injecting authenticity and emotion, despite character arcs that are more hinted at than fully realised.
Hannah Waterman's portrayal of Myra's erratic behaviour explores her comedic beats as a contingency against the overwhelming fear of her mortality. Rather than mere maudlinism, Waterman layers Myra's antics as self-protection, keeping both her family and the audience at arm's length. Despite combating a deeply personal and affecting topic, Myra's story surprisingly only skims the surface, falling short of unpacking the emotional wallop that such harsh realities deserve.
Like the audience, her husband Alec (a gently vulnerable Huw Higginson), struggles to keep pace, occasionally fracturing under the strain as he wrestles with his own emotional limitations and the uncertainty of anticipatory grief.
The themes land more effectively through Myra's daughters' divergent journeys. Charlotte Friels stands out with raw introspection as level-headed Hannah, who must learn to embrace her inner child and how to let go. Her sister Jenna on the other hand, must grow up and curb her impulsive nature. This nuanced performance is portrayed beautifully by Airlie Dodds. Together they convey the ebb and flow of sisterly closeness and distance, skillfully and with understated empathy.
This production bravely probes the intricacies of grief and family dynamics, and the ways we cope with life's most profound challenges. But can absurdity make death more relatable? Life's darkest moments can be its most ridiculous – and that's where grief's humour resides. The process of dying doesn't always produce big revelations. Sometimes it's just messy, senseless, and painfully imperfect. ‘Colder Than Here’ gives this a red-hot go, providing a therapeutic outlet for Ensemble audiences, almost hitting the emotional bullseye.
‘Colder Than Here’ plays at The Ensemble Theatre until October 12th.
See https://www.ensemble.com.au/shows/colder-than-here/ for further details.
Photos credit to Phil Erbacher
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