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April 10, 2026 — 12:25pm
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THEATRE
Spare a Thought for Jana Wendt ★★
La Mama Theatre, until April 26
A group of people sequestered in a house together under the guise of a weekend away is fertile ground for drama. As social niceties are stripped away, etiquette gives way to something more raw and intimate. This intensified dynamic has been adroitly captured in books, film and theatre – Charlotte Wood’s aptly titled novel The Weekend and Ash Flanders’ slice-of-life play This Is Living among them.
In Spare a Thought For Jana Wendt, a group of friends head to the country together.Darren GillNicola Watson’s play Spare A Thought for Jana Wendt is the latest addition to the canon. United by a bond that stretches back decades, three friends – June (Rebecca Bower), May (Tess Masters) and April (Alex Aldrich) – show up to a well-appointed AirBnb in the country, brought to life through Bianca Pardo’s set of polished marble surfaces and monochromatic interiors.
As is often the case with such depictions, the trio have diverged in values and vocation since once being tied by circumstance, and the weekend away is a bubbling cauldron of barely concealed resentments and thorny miscomprehensions. Add in some bad weather and their sneaking suspicion that they’re not alone in their AirBnb, and the stage is set.
The conversations that unfold are a rolodex of millennial concerns. Inflated housing prices? Tick. Climate change anxiety? Tick. Concerns about the youth? Tick. There isn’t much that’s surprising or particularly illuminating about Watson’s uneven script – well-trodden issues are dissected in well-worn ways, and the circular conversations that ensue plod along languorously.
The moral conscience of the play, primary school teacher May, is too grating and sanctimonious to anchor the proceedings in any meaningful way – reduced to a tired mouthpiece instructing the others how to think without any additional scaffolding to her personality. Under Anne Browning’s direction, Masters’ naturalistic performance as a tightly coiled spring waiting to unfurl is at odds with the caricaturist April and June – though it’s less clear what June is caricaturing.
The conversations that unfold are a rolodex of millennial concerns.Darren GillEnunciated with the exaggerated drawl of the upper-middle-class, Aldrich’s April is an entitled cosmetic surgeon, aware of her immense privilege insofar as she refuses to acknowledge or cede any of it. Purposefully trite addresses that begin with catchphrases like “as a mother” fly out of April’s mouth to great effect – this is a character taken to its extreme, and Aldrich’s heightened performance of April’s contradictions lend her a believable complexity despite her overblown veneer.
Bower is similarly affected as June, but this one-dimensional character doesn’t benefit from the same treatment. A PhD graduate 12 years in the making, June is, in many ways, a bridge between April’s moneyed opulence and May’s eked-out existence. Instead of vacillating between these two extremes in what could’ve been commentary on hypocrisy and performativity, Bower’s overdone June is vacuous and inscrutable.
Rolling peals of thunder and thudding footsteps are interchangeable to a discombobulating degree in Jack Burmeister’s sound design, while Tom Vulcan’s light design plays with the seed of unknowing at the heart of the play in interesting ways. When the play’s sleight of hand is finally revealed, however, the effect is strangely muted.
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At its best, Spare A Thought for Jana Wendt is a snapshot of what happens when the porous borders that separate the outside world from our personal lives collapse, and moral quagmires force us to confront what we think we know about ourselves.
It’s unfortunate that much of it feels derivative and doesn’t tread any new ground as it hurtles towards its predictable end.
Reviewed by Sonia Nair
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Sonia Nair is a contributor to The Age and Good Food.
Elizabeth Flux is Arts Editor at The Age.Connect via X or email.From our partners