The Melbourne Theatre Company’s production of Ínheritance’ has made it to Sydney, performing a season at the Sydney Opera House.
Raison uses the vehicle of a family reunion to create her drama. The Hamiltons and the Delaneys gather to celebrate the 80th birthday of long time matriarchs of the Malee district, twins Dibs Hamilton (Monica Maughan) and Girlie Delaney (Lois Ramsey). The children and grandchildren are returning to the family home, Annandale, which Dibs won ownership of many years ago through the toss of a coin. With Dibs’s husband Farley (Ronald Falk) on his last legs there’s competition amongst the two families as to how the property will be divided up if she decides to sell up.
With ‘Inheritance’ Raison has clearly set her sights on some targets which she polishes off efficiently. Raison hones in on the right wing elements in the country. There is no room to move for Nugget Hamilton, the Hamilton’s adopted Koori son, about whom rumors abound. On the other hand there’s plenty of room for right wing extremist Ashleigh Delaney to form her own successful political party. Geraldine Turner gives a charismatic, broadly comic performance as Delaney, a take-off of Pauline Hanson.
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I don’t know whether Raison was in some way inspired by the classic play, ‘Arsenic and Old Lace’, but there was a certain insidious, even evil quality about the two matriarchs. The scene near the close where the twins gathered to decide how the sale of the property will be divvied up, sent chills up my spine
