Five women wearing the same dress
by Alan Ball

These feisty females show they have more in common than an unflattering frock in Mixed Salad Productions' Adelaide premiere of Five women wearing the same dress.

In this touching comedy by Alan Ball, five reluctant, identically clad bridesmaids hide out in an upstairs bedroom. And they each have their own reasons for avoiding the drama unfolding at the wedding reception below.

This wickedly irreverent look at the intricacies of friendship sees the women learn that they have much more in common than they originally thought. They complain about the dresses, the bride, their lives, and their mutual involvement with a mysterious stud named Tommy Valentine, who is also at the wedding and chasing after a female guest in a backless blue linen dress.

The five women include Frances, a painfully sweet but sheltered fundamentalist; Mindy, the cheerful, wise-cracking lesbian sister of the groom; Georgeanne, whose heartbreak over her own failed marriage triggers outrageous behaviour; Meredith, the bride's younger sister whose precocious rebelliousness masks a dark secret; and Trisha, a jaded beauty whose die-hard cynicism about men is called into question when she meets Tripp, a charming bad-boy usher.

Since the play premiered in 1993 at the Manhattan Class Company, playwright Alan Ball has earned acclaim and recognition with a Best Original Screenplay Oscar and Golden Globe for American Beauty. In 2001 he began writing and producing the immensely successful TV hit Six Feet Under.

Mixed Salad Productions is a joint venture by local drama exponents Dave Simms and Sally Putnam. The company made an impressive debut on the local theatre scene last year, winning praise for its inaugural production of Terrence McNally's Love! Valour! Compassion!

"We really want to work on another excellent ensemble piece," says Sally. "The play has some great comedy, but also some poignant, darker scenes. The characters delve into the complicated landscape of relationships between women and explore why they always fall for the bad guy."

The cast includes Bernadette Bycroft, Mellisa Clark, Bonnie-Fay Madigan, Maggie O'Grady and Nicole Rutty.

The season runs from September 16 to October 2 in the Promethean Theatre, 116 Grote Street, City. Performances are on Thursdays to Saturdays at 7.30pm, Sundays and Wednesdays at 6.30pm, with matinees on Saturdays Sept 18 and 25 at 2.30pm. Tickets: $24 or $16.50 concession. Bookings: BASS on 131 246 or on-line at www.bass.net.au (booking fees apply).

Media Release, 26 August 2004

Congratulations to Mixed Salad for finding this wonderful show.

After the success of Love! Valour! Compassion! last year, the company went looking for a female ensemble piece and has come up trumps.

Alan Ball - of American Beauty and Six Feet Under fame - has written a very funny, brutally honest play given blueplate treatment by directors Sally Putnam and Dave Simms.

On an ironically romantic, bedsheet-inspired set from the ingenious Louise Dunn, we see five very different women, wearing the very same dress, retreat to an upstairs bedroom to escape from a posh Tennessee wedding reception. Each has a different reason for avoiding the wedding's aftermath and the evening is a smorgasbord of love, regret, passion, champagne - the whole damn thing. Putnam and Simms keep the pace and paranoia coming as the five contrasting lives under five wedding-cake dresses unravel before our eyes.

First cab off the rank is the ballsy Bonnie-Fay Madigan, who delivers an eye-popping performance as the bride's younger sister, Meredith. She is like Kelly Osbourne on wacky-weeded wedding cake, carrying the weight of comparison with her so-called perfect older sister on her shoulders, as well as a terrible secret she cannot keep to herself any longer.

Maggie O'Grady gives her finest performance as a Christian bridesmaid, Frances, who must avoid the sex, drugs and shock 'n' roll erupting around her to keep her religious integrity intact. Staying straight in this bedroom is no easy feat, and O'Grady gives balance to the sexual anarchy breaking out around her, before diving in at the deep end.

Mellisa Clark adds solid laughs and issues as forthright and unwieldy lesbian Mindy. Clark handles the unsympathetic part with aplomb, avoiding making Mindy a card-carrying cut-out and building the piece's drama.

Bernadette Bycroft tackles the difficult role of self-confessed, high-class man-easter Trisha with wily world-wearied style. She delivers the man hunger without cheapening the part, and handles the unexpected arrival of Tripp, her target for the evening, with just the right amount of self-destructive honesty.

Like the rest of the cast, Ben Passehl, who plays Tripp, could do with extra drawl and twang in his accent, but he looks and acts the unexpected part well in a telling scene with Trisha.

But it is Nicole Rutty who steals everything but the bed sheets as champagne-soaked Georgeanne, a wife in freefall, hooked on garbage options in life. It is a masterful display by an actress in full control of her craft, suppressing the anger and realising the full comic potential of this wonderfully written part. Rutty has lines to die for and the audience dies laughing with her.

Ball's dialogue is razor sharp, wincingly accurate about men and women's foibles, and gives an insight into the rarefied and dangerous sexual air of the American upper class.

The show has a tremendous ensemble feel with every actor given their moment to shine, but their mutual support and respect is the production's real strength. Full credit to Rob Andrewartha for his outrageous ice-blue bridesmaid creations, which let these women pour their heart and contrasting cleavage out into the evening.

The show has many laughs but also several powerful and poignant moments - just like most wedding receptions. This is theatre to celebrate - don't miss out.

Matt Byrne, Sunday Mail, 19 September 2004

Alan Ball's wickedly witty scripts for American Beauty and Six Feet Under have pushed him to the forefront of contemporary commentators.

This play is a gem with the same dark humour gleaming brightly all over it. Five bridesmaids in bad blue dresses gather in a chintzy bedroom after a wedding and before the reception. Their Deep So'th'n accents perfectly transport us to Knoxville, Tennessee, as they drink more champagne, smoke some pot, and swap salacious stories about the groom, the bride, husbands, lovers and each other.

Bonnie-Fay Madigan as Meredith, young sister of the bride and with a definite adolescent attitude, is splendid as an emerging butterfly not sure of herself but determined to get plenty of attention. Counterpoint to her stomping tomboy is Maggie O'Grady's goody-goody Frances whose stock answer of "Ah am a Christian" to any possible suggestion of sin becomes hysterically funny, with a tragic tinge when she is on the edge of a fall.

Bernadette Bycroft weighs in with worldy wise Trisha, who's been around the traps a few times and isn't afraid to say what she wants. Mellisa Clark's overt lesbian Mindy is definitely in the "I am Woman, hear me roar" category but standout in a cast of standouts is Nicole Rutty as Georgeanne. Frustrated wife of an indifferent husband, she becomes maudlin drunk and confesses her passion for the local stud, who seems to have had his way with almost everyone in the cast. Ben Passehl is cast as token male Tripp in an unsuccessful attempt by the playwright to round off the plot.

That device is the only fault with the show which I rate as the best thing I've seen all year. We didn't stop laughing all through this most professionally staged and performed splendid piece of theatre under the direction of Sally Putnam.

Don't hang back! Rush out and buy tickets now or I promise you word of mouth will make for standing room only.

Russell Starke, City Messenger, 21 September 2004

"There's this company called Mixed Salad doing good stuff at reasonable prices."

I couldn't agree more with director and producer Sally Putnam, who said this on opening night while the grateful audience was tucking into the best yummies offered by any theatre company in the city after the Adelaide premiere of this very funny play.

Writer Alan Ball is a southern boy from Atlanta, Georgia, who made his way to New York for a playwriting career that included 'Five Women...,' which was first shown in 1993. The siren call of Hollywood resulted in the screenplay for 'American Beauty' for which he won the 1999 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and the same award from the Writers Guild of America. His current smash hit is the TV drama series, 'Six Feet Under,' which has won two Golden Globes and six Emmies.
With no curtain available in the tiny Promethean Theatre, the audience is greeted by what appears to be one of those paperhanging jobs by the Three Stooges - absolutely bloody everything is done in a textile pattern of roses (Louise Dunn - designer). OK, this is a girl's bedroom, right? And do the girls enter! We meet the five women wearing the same dress - one by one - as they seek refuge upstairs from the disappointing and sometimes hostile world below.

We know Alan Ball can get into a character's head from his terrific writing in 'American Beauty,' but I can only rely on my women friends who confirm that Ball has exquisitely captured the diverse circumstances of these gals. This Mixed Salad production really shows off the exceptionally strong cast with each actress portraying a distinctly individual and intriguing character - complete with issues and their own way of coping and sharing. Bernadette Bycroft and Mellisa Clark both trained at the Montview Theatre School at London and they play the more mature spirits. Nicole Rutty has delicious moments of drunken self-pity. Younger cast members Bonnie-Fay Madigan and Maggie O'Grady perceptively portray personalities poles apart.

The situations can be complex with all women often on stage, but each actress contributes to the story - even when the focus is on another. The non-verbal communication between them was a treat to watch. Dialogue was sweetly done in consistent and lyrical (perhaps too lyrical) southern US accents, for the action took place in Knoxville, Tennessee. The five-alike dresses designed by Rob Andrewartha might have been the sixth woman in the play.

The character development by Ball and the performances were so strong that I didn't even notice there wasn't a story until after the show.

This is a very witty play full of American one-liners and interesting, true-to-life characters authentically performed. It was like being a fly on the wall in the powder room.

David Grybowski, dB Magazine, 21 September 2004