Feelgood Family Fare Transforms Rippon Lea Into Green Gables

The Age

Monday December 30, 1996

FIONA SCOTT-NORMAN

Theatre

Anne of Green

Gables

PERFORMING ARTS PROJECTS has created quite a niche for itself at the Rippon Lea gardens. Its succession of inventive and original outdoor productions, including Loving Friends, Indian Summer and Lady Chatterley's Lover, has done much to enhance and establish Melbourne's reputation as a city with an almost obscene appetite for outdoors theatre.

In its latest production, an adaptation of L. M. Montgomery's classic book Anne Of Green Gables, PAP is catering more for families than its usual adult audience. This shift in emphasis suits the company. Anne Of Green Gables is a charming and enjoyable show, and one of the best written and structured PAP scripts in quite some time.

Adapted by Julia Britton and Robert Chuter, the play captures the essence of the first book about Anne Shirley, focusing on the many flashpoints in the life of the young orphan girl with the exceedingly dramatic imagination.

This is a really lovely, unselfconscious, engaging show that uses the gardens well, and sustains pace and energy despite the several moves about the grounds demanded of the audience.

Melanie Michaels is delightful as the red-haired Anne Shirley, the volatile and talkative girl with a wild imagination, a passion for tragedy, romance and drama, and the innocent ability to tumble into trouble.

Brenda Palmer and Terry McDermott are excellent as Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert, the ageing brother and sister who adopt Anne and have their lives transformed, and Lucy Rechnitzer is perfect as Anne's best friend Diana.

Gary Kliger has directed Anne Of Green Gables well; the scenes mesh together seamlessly, and the show has a sweet energy that is difficult not to be swept up by. Anne Of Green Gables is a rarity, a feelgood show that actually makes you feel good without the nasty attendant taste of being emotionally manipulated.

At Rippon Lea Gardens, Elsternwick, until 29 January

Review by Fiona Scott-Norman

© 1996 The Age

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