Melbourne gets into Admissions
The VCE may be over for now, but a whole new academic drama is coming to Melbourne in the form of Admissions. The AJN spoke to Deidre Rubenstein about the play, which is directed by Gary Abrahams.
black comedy about white privilege” that “revels in discomfort” as director Gary Abrahams describes it, Admissions asks, “what are you really willing to sacrifice for your ideals?”
Called “astonishing and daring” by The New York Times, Admissions is a pacy, biting stage comedy by Bad Jews playwright Joshua Harmon, which promises to spark uncomfortable conversations about race, ethics, class, privilege and the higher education system.
Audiences will be talking about it “like crazy on the way home”, said actress Deidre Rubenstein, speaking to The AJN before the play’s Melbourne season at Southbank Theatre, The Sumner opens on the weekend.
Staged as a production of the MTC with Abrahams at the helm, whose previous credits include the Australian productions of Bad Jews and 33 Variations, starring Oscar-winner Ellen Burstyn.
In a personal confession, Rubenstein said she had initially wondered if the play was simply being “provocative for the sake of” provocation.
But when she read the script, she was “pleasantly surprised” and ultimately won over by Harmon’s work.
“I really admired it,” said Rubenstein of the delightful play that, she says, is “relevant to us all … yet not didactic”.
“It’s dealing with many, many, many aspects, like a prism … and so you see another side, another side, and another side and another side” of the issues at its core.
“The dialogue is fabulous”, added Rubenstein, which she said made her role “a joy to play”.
A veteran of Australian stage and screen, Rubenstein won the AFI Award for best actress for her role in Palace of Dreams, the ABC’s miniseries about a Jewish family running a Sydney hotel during the 1930s. She has played roles ranging from Gertrude Stein in the musical Loving Repeating to a scheming neighbour on … well, Neighbours.
For this role, Rubenstein will be tapping into a unique vein of the modern American liberal angst that has taken hold in various settings around the world.
The MTC’s production has kept the hothouse New Hampshire setting of the original, with its characters placed quite literally at the gates of the Ivy League – the pursuit of entry into which is the basis of their careers and deepest personal hopes.
In Admissions, Rubenstein plays Roberta, a staffer at an elite prep school who, early in the show, is given the thankless task of making the school’s brochure look more diverse for her boss Sherri.
Played by Offspring’s Kat Stewart, Sherri is immensely proud of her achievements in increasing the proportion of non-white students in her school and eager to do more for the cause.
Sherri is, however, soon put into a tailspin of her own when the kind of admissions system she has championed for years – specifically, the positive discrimination aimed at increasing opportunities for less privileged students on the basis of race – comes back to bite her personally.
Sherri’s 17-year-old son Charlie, played by Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’s William McKenna, is left on the deferred list for entry to Yale, while his apparently less-qualified friend Perry, who has a mixed-race father, is let straight in.
The issue of the whiteness of a Jew like Charlie, in the view of an administrative system seeking to discriminate altruistically according to racial history, is just one of many hot buttons on which the play touches, while of course keeping focus on the characters’ personal drives, hypocrisies and struggles.
“Josh Harmon’s writing goes for the jugular, and like a cat with a mouse, it toys with you,” wrote Abrahams.
“The play daringly offers up a catch-22 situation in which there is no way for the characters to win without suffering a big loss. And the wicked game it plays with the audience is that it forces your allegiances to shift on a dime.”
Rubenstein stayed determinedly mum about just what kind of dilemmas and reversals are in store for the characters. Yet she wanted readers to know that the play “packs a punch” in its compact length. And that despite the tight running time, Admissions will leave audiences with plenty to discuss, as well as plenty to enjoy, thanks to in Rubenstein’s words, “fabulous” and funny dialogue and a “sterling” cast.
Rubenstein found the attitude of the play resonated with her own cultural upbringing.
“It’s not ‘this is how you should think’ at all, and I would never want that … it’s that very Jewish thing of debate.”
“As Jews, we’re very concerned about ethics, are we not?”
Admissions is being staged at Southbank Theatre, The Sumner from March 5 to April 9. Bookings: mtc.com.au
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