Cirrus@Austlit

''Lally Katz is a playwright with a lot of talent and some quantity of unevenness. In the past few years we’ve seen the talent shine. In 2014, Neighbourhood Watch, starring Robyn Nevin and directed by Simon Stone, was an ambitious, not entirely co-ordinated play, but it was rich enough to allow Nevin to give one of the performances of her life: wonderfully funny and deeply moving at the same time. And Stone’s direction worked to give it constant colour and movement. You long for both Nevin and Stone in the Melbourne Theatre Company’s half-baked production of Katz’s new and very talented play Minnie & Liraz, and maybe for Miriam Margolyes as well, who did Neighbourhood Watch in Adelaide. This, though, is a bit unfair on Nancye Hayes and Sue Jones, who do all they can and more, as does Rhys McConnochie, in the face of Anne-Louise Sarks’s raw, drab and hapless production. Even the blocking stumbles so that you feel the director is way out of her depth and a promising play with a fair dash of Katz’s natural sparkle and buoyancy is being diminished by a controlling intelligence with no feeling for this kind of theatre. Everything is featureless and ugly. One of the roles is execrably performed, while another is a long way from excellent, though through all of this you feel the energy of Katz’s talent even if it’s constantly battling with her vulgarity and lapses of taste.' (Introduction)