NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH
“It’s not that hard to say hello,” muses Megan Holloway, just minutes after running out of her rehearsal of Lally Katz’s Neighbourhood Watch alongside theatre great Robyn Nevin, “but so often we make the choice not to because it’s easier.”
She is referring to the sense of community that she feels her generation craves, a tension that is teased out through the friendship between her character, a 20-something out-of-work actor, and Ana, a Australian-Hungarian war survivor (the role was written specifically for Nevin).
Their connection blooms on the lawn of a cul-de-sac, and then over coffee: “Ana has so many stories to tell her and because Catherine is a hopeless romantic she gets swept up in it.” But the stories bear a message of love, lessons learnt, the independence and strength of women.
Holloway grew up with Perth – in a cul de sac, in fact – and in Sydney has her own Ana in her local area, Erskineville. “We’re not friends yet but we talk to each other a lot,” says Holloway, “one day I will talk about weeding my garden and the next day there will be a green bin out the front of the house.” In a further case of life imitating art, Nevin herself has become a role model for Holloway, a newcomer to acting, and has even donated to her wardrobe. “A pair of skorts,” laughs Holloway, “It was a running joke, people kept asking me why I kept wearing them so she gave me some of hers.”
Just like the motto sported on the namesake crimebusting Neighbourwood Watch website, a Maori proverb: What is the most important thing in the world? It is people, it is people, it is people! the play is about friendship and human bonds. Says Holloway: “Life keeps on repeating itself, generation after generation, people are born and they die. The little things count, you pass on things and you are always learning. Ana will of course die before Catherine, but what she has learnt from this women will stay with her, and Ana will keep living through her when she passes on this knowledge.”
Jul 23-Aug 28, Upstairs at Belvoir St Theatre, 25 Belvoir St, Surry Hills, $39-59, 9699 3444, belvoir.com.au
