Garry Marshall & Lowell Ganz. Galleon Theatre Group Inc. Domain Theatre. 2 May 2025
Thank goodness for Community Theatre of the standard of Wrong Turn at Lungfish!
When Arts Minister Andrea Michaels seemed affronted during a recent ABC 891 Radio interview by the suggestion $80 million over a decade might not be a sufficient budget to support the Arts- all the Arts- she may have been oblivious to the dire state of professional theatre in South Australia. Dire because a city the size of Adelaide supports so few professional productions. Our dear Arts Minister needs to get out to see so called amateur work like this to appreciate the scope that exists to develop the professional space in this State!
Wrong Turn at Lungfish, showcases what lives in that space!
There’s nothing like the prospect of mortality to provoke introspection and prompt great belly laughs! Sublime writing by Gary Marshall and Lowell Ganz, somewhat reminiscent of Niel Simon in its often brusque, sharp wit, is a gift this Galleon Theatre Group ensemble does not squander
Tony Busch, Dora Stamos and Tianna Cooper are simply outstanding, while Wade Cook shows promise. But I am ahead of myself!
A bold choice for a small community theatre group, Wrong Turn at Lungfish explores the many complexities of being human and connecting with others, sometimes completely unexpectedly, when we stumble upon our shared humanity through vulnerability.
Peter Ravenswaal (Peter Busch), an embittered former Dean of a college, is highly literate, blind and struggling to come to terms with the illness that will eventually see to his demise. Young New York Italian, Anita Meredino (Dora Stamos), probably from “Hell’s Kitchen” given Stamos’ superb accent, is barely literate but gifted with intuitive intelligence by birth and street smarts by necessity. Volunteering for a reading-for-the-blind organization brings Anita into Ravenswaal’s embittered orbit weekly, while an unfortunate student Nurse (Tianna Cooper) must suffer Ravenswaal’s grief driven tantrums and tirades because no one else will. Having lost his wife but a year earlier, Ravenswaal is immersed in grief for her and his own impending mortality. Hearsay brings us to know Dora’s boyfriend Dominic (Wade Cook), something of a ne’er do well, and to suspect all is not as it seems.
Marshall and Ganz’s beautifully drawn cocktail of character dynamics is an ensemble actor’s dream, one this trio of capable actors make the most of. Ravenswaal variously cajoles, taunts, rejects and educates Anita as he demands she read Schappenhaur, Keats, and Elliot, among others, while his love for Beethoven both punctuates and underscores his intellectual and emotional acuity. Ravenswaal’s observation that humanity made a “wrong turn at Lungfish” foreshadows what is to come. Anita counters with increasingly clever wit and disarming honesty as the barriers between these unlikely, yet entirely believable, friends collapses.
Act One crackles with the energy of this battle of wits and vulnerabilities as Ravenswaal and Anita find mutual respect and fondness. Cooper is masterful in her rendition of the harried Nurse, her insights into the character reflected in the rollercoaster of her interactions with Ravenswaal.
Act Two sees the appearance of Dominic, a thug of a man for all the usual cliched reasons; somehow Marshall and Ganz’s script keeps him on the better side of stereotype. Wade Cook, a musical theatre performer tackling his first stage show, gives the character a good crack but doesn’t quite find the depth of Dominic implicit in the text. To be fair, Cook is contending with an entrance halfway through a play with a well-established rhythm and the stella performances of his cast mates. It’s a tough gig matching such energy late in the piece. However, Cook does well to convey the brutishness Dominic brings to what is more an arrangement with Dora than a relationship; unfortunately, Dora sees it as the latter. An element of the elegance of the writing is how Dora’s doubts, which Ravenswaal intuits, are laced through the fabric of the text.
T.S.Elliott’s The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock provides a poignantly beautiful and moving bookend to this superb production.
Set design by director Rosie Aust, Galleon Theatre President Kym Clayton, and Michael Ralph is best summarized as eminently award worthy. Trish Winfield’s Lighting Design, Warren McKenzie’s (Galleon’s VP) Sound Design and Mary Cummins great costume design each and collectively support this great production well.
A superb example of community theatre at its best, Wrong Turn at Lungfish, is yet another production I’ve reviewed featuring tertiary trained actors, something I would ask our Minister for the Arts to reflect on when spruiking Arts budgets. Where are the professional opportunities for such actors in South Australia?
Thankfully companies like Galleon, The Rep and Northern Light are providing some.
Wrong Turn at Lungfish, Go! See it!
When: 2 to 10 May
Where: Domain Theatre
Bookings: galleon.org.au
Editors Note: Kym Clayton, on set design in this production, is both Galleon Theatre Company’s President, a member of the Adelaide Critics Circle Incorporated, and a writer and critic for The Barefoot Review.
