Q44’s Dolores

Q44’s inaugural season opener is a harrowing and hilarious rendition of Edward Allan Baker’s Dolores.

Gabriella Rose-Carter’s new theatre company promised to be confronting (a word that is often thrown around) and mercilessly did this play deliver – in perfectly executed, New York-dweller drawls.

The company founder herself, Rose-Carter plays Sandra, a woman enjoying a precious Sunday afternoon clear of the husband and kids, bombarded in an instant by blackened-eyed sister, Dolores (Nicole Melloy). The duologue to follow journeys the siblings through roaring emotional highs and lows, pivoting around the domestic violence they’ve both endured.

Playing out in Sandra’s olive-green and tangerine eighties kitchen, under a haze of (stage) cigarette smoke, the high-haired era is seamlessly summoned – with the issues roused still painfully relevant.

An intimate theatre space allows little room to hide from the tension and tears, but we also get in on the laughs and love that the squabbling sisters can’t help but share. Rose-Carter and Melloy never falter, making this powerful one-act performance all the more convincing.  Brace yourself, but enjoy.

Dolores runs from May 1-18
Q44 Theatre Company 550 Swan Street, Burnley
For more information and tickets visit q44.com.au.