Theatre Review

Eleanor Pearson
27 March 2017

Losing a Taste for Dahlias, and Finding a Life

Hunters Hill Theatre’s production of Travels with My Aunt is sharp, symbolic and swiftly-paced. This reinvention of a Graham Greene 1969 comic novel leaves plenty to the imagination. It is absurdist – a genre which may be unfamiliar to some stalwart audience members.

If you just go with it, you may find the journey – taking bank manager Henry Pulling away from his early retirement and quiet dahlia-cultivation in suburbia, and into a life of political intrigue, crime and danger overseas – well worth the ticket.
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Julia Griffith as Aunt Augusta.
One of the signs there’s a touch of the surreal, is the fact that Henry is played by two actors, Bob Guest and Peter Gizariotis. The pair are often on stage together, but not always playing Henry. The necessary teamwork between these two actors is clever, subtle, and frequently hilarious.
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Hats are an obvious indicator of a character change. Throughout Act One Henry is depicted in a bowler hat - perhaps to cast Henry as the common man living an ordinary life. 

Travels with My Aunt

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Peter Gizariotis as Henry Pulling
Jewell Homad Johnson’s set also reflects this imagery. To the back of the stage in both acts there’s a screen referencing the work of Belgian surrealist painter Rene Magritte. 
Later Henry changes, when he realises he no longer wishes to be  “a tourist in Aunt Augusta’s world”.
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​To begin with, Henry Pulling is a wan character indeed – who finds going to his mother’s funeral “agreeably exciting”.
When his outrageous, Titian-haired Aunt Augusta (Julia Griffith) arrives at the funeral “looking like Rita Hayworth”, one suspects Henry won’t be tending to his dahlias for much longer. After a whirlwind trip with Aunt Augusta aboard the Orient Express Henry begins to lose something of the “spirit of a bank manager”!
This production has an ambitious soundscape of music and noises, evocative of time and place.
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When in Paris – you might hear the strains of Edith Piaf. In Istanbul, there’s the sound of a Turkish marketplace. Back in London, Henry returns to his home and suburbia to the tune of “English Country Garden”.

The many and varied smaller roles played by Frances Etheridge and Prudence Robinson-Foxe are an ensemble actor’s delight. These brief appearances are often surprising, and show off the range of these two actors, who are also the stage managers for this production.
While the title role of Aunt Augusta is carried well by Julia Griffith, one felt perhaps she could have been played with a bit more aplomb initially. 
By the end of Act Two we see a more vulnerable side to Aunt Augusta, which is soon eclipsed by her resilient return to centre-stage sparkling with costume jewellery and a carpe diem attitude.

Some of Aunt Augusta’s idiosyncrasies do actually pale a little with the passage of time. Wordsworth, her black lover from Sierra Leone – shocking to Henry at the time the story is set (post-WWII) is not such a stretch for today’s audiences. 
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​The staging of this production overall is impressive. The simple use of chairs and a cupboard to unambiguously portray objects as varied as lawn-mowers and prison bars, or a train carriage, and set the scene for the entrance of so many different characters, is a feat of absurdist drama itself.
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Travels with My Aunt plays until April 2, 2017
Hunters Hill Theatre  
Season:  24 March - 2 April
Address:  22 Alexandra Street, Hunters Hill, 2110
See the Preview for Travels with My Aunt