Photo by Matthew Chen.
BY JAN NARY
David Milroy’s Waltzing the Wilarra is staged in a mixed-race dance club in post-World War II Perth, a place where locals can escape the problems of everyday life for a moment. Elsa, one of the stolen generation, is the club singer, which affords her solace from the broken relationship with her mother and the heartache of marriage to a veteran suffering from PTSD and alcoholism. Her husband’s best friend Charlie is in love with her; her half-sister Fay is in love with Charlie. But there’s more.
Lorinda May Merrypor plays the role of Elsa, and like her character, Lorinda loves to sing.
“It’s the way that I process things too,” says Lorinda. “At the beginning I related to her being a singer to develop the character. For act two of the show, 40 years later, I have to play an 80-year-old woman. I’m 27, so how do I do that? I actually drew on my grandmother a lot, I got my Dad to visit her and make a bunch of voice recordings with her. I used those and videos that I have to study how she talks and walks.”
Elsa has developed and changed – as characters do – since the tour took to the road.
“That’s an amazing thing about acting; there’s no final product, it’s always changing and evolving – especially with a story as dramatic as this one with so many different relationships; with my husband, with my mother, with my half-sister, with Charlie – who sings with me at the club; I get to bounce off all these other incredible actors. You don’t want to be stuck in it, you want to feel everything brand new every night.”
There’s a lot of emotion and drive in the story and the action, with a two-man band that Lorinda says puts out the energy of a ten-man combo and an eight-character cast with the vitality to match.
“I’d be exhausted after every show if I didn’t enjoy it so much. It’s a lot of fun but they’re deep issues. We’re lucky to have Brittanie Shipway as director; throughout rehearsals she instilled in us the need to leave the emotion on the stage and just reunite post-show as a joyful group of friends.
“We certainly manage to do that; beach cricket is one of our favourite go-tos! The RPAC show is nearly the end of the tour so you’ll get a very polished, worked-in performance!” laughs Lorinda.
Waltzing the Wilarra will play at RPAC on the evening of Saturday October 11. For tickets, go to rpac.com.au or phone (07) 3829 8131.
