Over the past
couple of years I’ve seen a number of productions set largely in kitchens or
houses, and have read numerous books in which important conversations are had
in kitchens, and many conversations with my friends have been shared in their
kitchens. You could dismiss it as “everything including the kitchen sink” but
that’s not it; it’s not the sink that is crucial, nor the kitchen itself if
we’re being honest, but rather the rawness and unguarded nature of the
conversation which happens when you’re in a place you feel safe in. Helen Garner knows this, which
is why in all her books you’ll find kitchens as little theatres of life,
crucibles of thought and action, meeting places, familial communal spaces;
ordinary theatres of mundanity where extraordinary things happen. And so it is
with SUDS’ The
Bitterness of Pomegranates.
Written and
directed by Julia Clark, ‘Pomegranates’
is a (new) play set in a small (unnamed and unlocated) Australian town, and
follows a family as one sister befriends the town odd-bod (or ‘lunatic’ as we
are told on the production’s website, but I don’t like the term). It’s a play
about the small-town rumour-mill, about babbling gossips and secrets that never
remain so, how privacy is everyone’s business, and even though it’s a short
play – no longer than fifty minutes – there is something in it which sticks to you.
