Marchpane's Reviews > The Performance

The Performance is a novel consisting almost entirely of its characters’ interior thoughts. Three women in the arts—a professor, a wealthy donor, and theatre usher/drama student—watch Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days and their minds rove.

On stage, the actor playing Winnie is buried in a mound of dirt in a scorched, barren wasteland. Disembodied, she delivers her lines, and sparks form in the minds of our three watchers. This clever structural device really worked for me, both as a scaffold for a novel and to reveal new angles on the play that I hadn’t spotted before. (Familiarity with Happy Days is not strictly necessary, but it will enhance your experience of this novel: at minimum give the wiki a skim).

Marie Kean as Winnie in Happy Days

Happy Days is a really weird play, open to interpretation, so probing the audience’s minds in real time is a fantastic notion. There are lots of fun intertextual connections and references, but this novel isn’t given over to nerdy Beckettian analysis completely (alas).

The two older ladies have seen this play before, so their minds wander rather a lot. The young drama student is too overwhelmed and anxious to maintain close attention. They ruminate on domestic mundanities, past and ongoing personal traumas, existential dread. Reflecting on their various experiences of womanhood in sight of the blatant metaphor—a buried woman—on stage. In their seats, in the dark, watching the trapped-yet-stoical Winnie witter, these three characters exist as if equals; an illusion that is shattered when they are brought into contact with each other during intermission.

The novel doesn’t always live up to its terrific concept, and it misses marks here and there (for instance, a depiction of a racial microaggression that was well-intentioned but clumsily executed). It’s set during catastrophic bushfires that call to mind last year’s Black Summer, but is not centrally about the fires, which gives an impression that the real stakes are elsewhere.

The Performance is beautifully written, contemplative literary fiction, about art and still moments and the effects they have on us. Especially recommended to anyone who enjoyed Heather Rose’s The Museum of Modern Love. 4.5 stars.