Sarsaparilla with a twist

While chatting with the Star last year, the Sydney Theatre Company’s Robyn Nevin was very excited when she learned the company’s production of Patrick White’s The Season At Sarsaparilla was opening on the same night as the Mardi Gras parade.

This new production features the cross-gender casting of Peter Carroll as the bitter housewife Girlie Polson, and Carroll is featured in the show’s poster, dressed in a pink chenille dressing gown and matching hat.

Nevin promised she would do her best to get Carroll, dressed as Girlie, on the back of a float for this Mardi Gras parade.

When informed of Nevin’s comment, Carroll lets out a hearty laugh. Robyn kept this a secret from me, but I love the idea of doing it, he says during a morning chat before rehearsals.

I would love to be up there on a float, but I think I would need some company, so I would have to get my daughter Tamsin in her best Dusty Springfield wig and long gown to join me. That would be some float, wouldn’t it?

The Season At Sarsaparilla is set in the late 1960s in a street where three families are living the Australian suburban dream, while the local dogs are on heat, their lust driving them into a frenzy.

Beneath the suburban surface, however, are layers of dangerous vitriol and deceptions.

This new STC production is directed by Benedict Andrews and also stars Pamela Rabe, John Gaden and Brandon Burke.

Carroll admits he prepared himself for this stage venture by spending his summer re-reading the entire catalogue of White’s work. I really wanted to be in the mood to approach this, he says.

His character of Girlie Polson, which was played by Robyn Nevin in 1973, is one of the women trapped behind the glass of the windows of the houses. The local busybody, Girlie believes anyone who leads life differently from her is wrong.

How the late Patrick White would feel about his play opening the same night as Mardi Gras -“ an event which the late writer dismissed as entirely unhelpful -“ Carroll is not too sure. He does believe, however, that White would approve of the cross-gender casting of the play.

I asked the director very early on about his vision with this approach to cross-dressing, and the response was this was an examination of role play and sexual role play and what that actually means in suburban life.

The women in the story are the organisers, and once they get their men off to work, they are so driven to arrange their lives. The fact we are playing with the depictions of role play -“ I think White would approve of that.

The Season At Sarsaparilla previews from 26 February and opens 3 March at the Drama Theatre of the Sydney Opera House. Bookings on 9250 1777.