Review: SUDS' Heat Lightning - Raising The Red Bandana

Crackling with the electricity, Heat Lightning captures characters grappling with economic hardship and emotional unrest.

Design by Margot Roberts

Hand-painted rock formations and cacti greeted me as I sat, rainbow pencil in hand, and began to sweat. The mise-en-scène in the Cellar Theatre consisted of a bar, ragged furniture, and antique knick knacks, diminished by the arid desert. The desert so often symbolises the obstacles that stand between a protagonist and their dreams. In Heat Lightning, the desert shields Olga (Adele Beaumont) and her little sister Myra (Elodie Jakes) from the thrill of romantic desires, the root cause of their vulnerability. 

Heat Lightning is a window into one woman’s struggle for indifference when tormented by withheld emotions. Olga, our stoic protagonist, fled from a city storming with the dangers of one-sided love, towards the humble solitude of California’s Mojave desert. When we meet Olga, she has become calloused and independent, reinventing herself as a grubby mechanic, gas-station operator, and the sole parental figure to her kid-sister Myra.

A cyclical dramatic comedy written by George Abbot and Leon Abrams during the Great Depression, Heat Lightning captures characters grappling with economic hardship and emotional unrest, highlighting the societal contrasts between men and women, rich and poor, and rural and urban. 

Adapted by directors Pearl Cardis and Emma Johns, this SUDS Summer Season production narrows in on Olga’s emotional journey as her ex-lover, George (Jeremy Jenkins) attempts to leave her love struck. His role is a metaphor for heat lightning, a silent but ever threatening storm that remains on the horizon.

The soundscape was depressing and diegetic. The musicians (Margot Roberts and Ben Bauchet) were incorporated as background beggars, playing solemn violin, guitar, and harmonica amidst the desert sands. The dismal tone of the setting was uplifted by the excellent comedic relief provided by the ensemble: Tinkle and Feathers (Estella Kennedy and Sian Anketell); two haughty, drunken divorcees, and their emasculated, financially dependent chauffeur (James Wily). The women adorn jewels, squabble incessantly, and juxtapose brilliantly against the hard-pressed gas-station. 

“Take this thing off,” George is referring to the red bandanna that shields Olga’s beauty from desert dust, cactus pins, and men like him. The spitting image of Rosie the Riveter, the suffragette who flexes her bicep below the words, ‘We Can Do It’, Olga removes her bandana in exchange for a dress and red lipstick. Is George worth it? Jenkins' performance was incredibly captivating — a commanding, intense, and malignant force. Beaumont and Jenkins show the layers of a relationship peeled back and with each scene, the audience feel their candidness and chemistry building. Olga confronts George with her powerful independence, “Don’t you think I’m the same woman who used to eat out of your hand.”

Blocking was a dramatic device, used to keep Olga’s heart tucked up her sleeve; in each duologue Olga is in constant movement across the stage, hiding from her past, despite having been found. This was dynamic on stage, and an apt directorial decision. 

The flame between Olga and George results in hope and naivety. The crowd held its breath when George and Olga inevitably kissed; raw, dangerous, and passionate — a definite highlight of the performance.

As the play progresses Myra comes to regret her own quest for male validation, and wishes her sister had stopped her from experiencing love, and heartbreak. The sisters realise that looking for love from men led them to forget about the love they had for one another. A shifting dynamic which fits the audience's emotional need to see Olga loved.

The play cyclically slows back into the quotidian life of the sisters, as though nothing had happened, and leaves one empowered by Olga and Myra’s story. I was filled with inspiration to pursue my own dreams, irrespective of any pushback from the outside world, and to wear a red bandana while doing so.