A delightfully amusing and poignant play about the nature of marriage, the pursuit of happiness and the perfect foxtrot!
Wallflowering is a play with a gentle heart, insight and plenty of warm humour.
Cliff and Peg are a married couple who’ve always fitted together comfortably but now find themselves out of step with life and each other.
Playwright Peta Murray draws astonishing parallels between the structure of a troubled marriage and the structure of the moves a couple makes on the dance floor. Peg and Cliff were once prize-winning ballroom dancers, and the story is interspersed with ballroom dancing by a younger couple who represent them not only in their glory days but also their older idealised view of themselves.
While most women should be able to identify with Peg’s yearnings on some level, it’s Cliff whose needs turn out to be more complex and compelling. Peg is no longer content to quietly and unquestioningly follow her husband. She wants to lead and sees possibilities and excitement in change while realising this may cause them to be out of step with each other.
There is great comedy and pathos in the exploration of Cliff and Peggy’s “ordinary” lives, and the audience are transported to a glorious vision of our champions as perfectly synchronised and extraordinary people. When all is said and danced, Wallflowering emerges as an intelligent, romantic fable, an honest yet hopeful tale that shows it’s possible for two people to stay in step with each other even when they’re dancing to different rhythms.
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