In her first solo festival show, Nelly Thomas presents a show about the rather dry topic of nature vs nurture. Giving it a touch of Thomas comedy magic, she explores the various outcomes of growing up in a different family.
Nelly began the show with descriptions of her parents and the place she grew up in country Western Australia. To Nelly’s surprise, a woman sitting in the front row indicated that she had also grown up in that same town. Through Nelly’s descriptions of this town, the woman nodded in agreement and laughed heartily at all that Nelly described. These colourful illustrations of the town were just as enjoyable for the rest of us. She told of the class divide in the town and the various prejudices present amongst this somewhat eccentric community. Her descriptions of her parents portrayed them as quite larger than life characters that were fascinating.
Nelly then proceeded to illustrate three possible versions of herself depending on an addition to her family life. She made use of her brilliant character work to bring these people to life.
The first scenario supposed that her family were devoutly religious. It was in this section that we were introduced to the character of Nelly Whitelaw, an almost fanatical Christian woman working as a telemarketer. The fact that she was working for the Family First Party allowed Nelly to play up on the conservativeness and prejudices of this character. Combined with Nelly’s own admittance of being opinionated and naïve, the phone conversations played out were full of fantastic humour.
In the next scenario, Nelly imagined what would have resulted if she had been part of a family of wealth. After some material about her experiences with supposed “culture” when in Perth studying, she introduced us to another character. This time it was an wealthy Vegetable Rights Activist, or as Nelly described her, a Lefty Wanker. Again including naivety and strong opinions, this woman gave a bizzare lecture on research into the emotions of plantlife. The absurdity of the lecture was the main source of hilarity of this section, along with images on cards to illustrate these strange concepts.
The final scenario explored what would have happened if she had been born a male. For this, she talked at length about her real life uncle Neville (“Jap” to his mates) and then launched into an impersonation of him.
Nelly’s presentation of this show was top notch. Her story telling was captivating and executed with warmth. Her character work was brilliant, using only minimal props and costuming to flesh them out. The majority of this night’s audience was of an older age bracket, but this show would appeal to everyone.
For booking details go to Family Ties .