The Longest Minute is a Queensland Theatre performance centered on rugby league performing at Queenland Performing Arts Centre. When a slight miscommunication about which play I was attending occurred, I realised that life is full of pleasant surprises and I am glad I got to experience The Longest Minute first hand.
“Where were you on the NRL’s Grand Final night in 2015?” I personally have no idea, as I never watch sports, but it must have meant a lot to writers Robert Kronk and Nadine McDonald-Dowd for them to write a play based on it. At around 80 minutes, The Last Minute has a bit of everything thrown into the mix, from the silly and hilarious, to serious social commentary, as well as some deeply emotionally scenes that left many reaching for the tissues.
The story begins in Townsville, Queensland 1995 as the history of the Wright family is told by lead actor Chenoa Deemal who plays Jessica the daughter of the football mad family. Her family members are her father, Frank (Mark Sheppard), a former small town football star known as the Black Flash. Her mother, Margaret (Louise Brehmer) and her older brother , Laurie (Jeremy Ambrun). Laurie is an upcoming football star but is reluctant about his sports career much to Jessica’s chagrin, leaving her only to try harder to win the support and adoration of her father who wishes she could be more like a ‘normal’ girl and give up on her big sporting ambitions.
Jessica was born in the same year that the Cowboys were formed in 1995 and narrates the story as she jumps back and forth through the decades describing her wish to be one of the all time great football players just like her idol Mattie Bowen. However, in her youthful naivety she can’t understand why she won’t be able to play in the big leagues just because she’s a girl. Her quest for acceptance in a male-dominated sport is told through a life story that spans through decades of drama, life lessons and heartaches, which culminates around the 2015 grand finale.
Chenoa Deemal’s performance as Jessica is incredible, as she charismatically jumps between the role of a joyous child to an adolescent that begins to recognise the pains that come with realities and hardships. Louise Brehmer has a great story arc that takes her from playing an almost cartoonish young mother that wants a meat pie while she watches the footy, drawing much humour, to playing a heartbroken and emotionally distressed mother during the latter half of her performance.
The actors play an ensemble of characters and it’s fantastic to see how effortlessly the actors allow the audience to be convinced they’re playing different roles by merely adding a hat, or tie to their costume. Lafe Charlton who plays Uncle Gordon switches between a corporate suit in one scene to camping it up with a blue wig on and playing a teenage cheerleader. If I explain that Mr Charlton is a 60-year-old man you may too see the humour.
It has been a few years since I have had the pleasure of going to a theatre performance and had forgotten the power of what an actor can achieve within the minimal space provided. The stage is fairly small and laid out as a grass field with the marked sports lines, and a towering score board that lights up each time a year passes or location to the story changes. Beneath the billboard was the centrepiece, a grass hill that at times in the performance represented the sports hill in Townsville where the spectators can watch the game. Having my partner with me who comes from Townsville, she was impressed by the nuances of the town that kept popping up from the famous grass hill, to the men dressed in mining shirts or mentions of the infamous Flinders Street.
What stayed with me after the show was the way that a performance like this can allow me to tap into an imaginative part of my brain that allowed me as a child to transform my tree house into a spaceship or a cardboard box into a racing car. With great acting and minimal props, the ensemble was able to take that spectators grass hill and turn it into Jessica’s bed for one scene, and in the next transform it into a spot to go fishing. It takes real talent delivering great dialogue coupled with a captivating story line and exceptional performances, which everyone involved in this performance have succeeded in doing. In the future if I find out that the Cowboys are in another NRL Grand Final I might just tune in because apparently they can be pretty damn inspiring.
Cremorne Theatre, QPAC
26 May - 23 June 2018
Queensland Theatre Company
JUTE Theatre Company
Review by Thomas Harrison