Utility by Emily Schwend, Orange Tree Theatre, 2 June 2018

We thought this was a fabulous piece, beautifully portrayed.

The synopsis sounds like a great many plays; a domestic drama about a woman trapped in an unsatisfactory marriage, struggling to keep the household together domestically and financially.

This is kitchen sink drama to such an extent that there is even a kitchen sink with a somewhat intrusive window as part of the set. I think the theatre had accidentally withheld two decent seats (our usual favourites) and sold the two that were restricted by the set; so we made a late seat swap to return to “our” regular seats. Minor stuff for previewistas like us – I’m sure the Orange Tree will resolve/have resolved for post preview audiences.

In short, the play is extremely well written and the performances are all excellent, making this an exceptional production well worth seeing.

Here is a link to the Orange tree resource for this play.

All of the performances were excellent, but Robyn Addison as the lead role, Amber, was a standout performance in this piece.

Formal reviews have just started to come in at the time of writing, but they seem to be coming through as deservedly good ones – click here for a link to find them.

Did Janie and I go to Don Fernando to chew over the issues and some Spanish food afterwards?  By heck we did.

If you get a chance to see this production of Utility, we suggest you take it.