Cover image: Alexandria Henderson, Andrew Lewis and Brett Hamilton. Credit Stewart Thorpe

Arthur Haynes and the Smoking Gun

By Jenny Davis

THEATRE 180

Government House Ballroom

September 11

The destiny of Arthur Haynes and the Smoking Gun hopefully will be to tour far and wide as the latest smash-hit for Theatre 180 but for now it is the ultimate site-specific show.

So site-specific, in fact, that one chair among the hundreds arrayed on the polished floor of Government House Ballroom sits on the very spot where one of WA’s most notorious killings took place almost exactly 100 years ago.

Whomever sat in seat M7 during this play’s short premiere season may well have felt a few extra shivers up the spine as the ghost of Cyril Gidley watched his dramatic self (played by Brett Hamilton) shot stone dead by Audrey Jacob (Alexandria Henderson).

On the night of 26-27 August 1925, Governor Sir William Campion and Lady Katherine Campion hosted hundreds of guests at the annual St John of God charity ball. The band was in full swing just after midnight when 20-year-old Audrey walked onto the dancefloor and gunned down her former fiancé. She still had the smoking revolver in her hand as hundreds of heads spun around at the fatal shot and a few horrified witnesses heard her say, “I did it”, before being led away by police.

For the citizenry of 1920s sleepy hollow Perth, it was a scandalous incident right at the very heart of the social, political and financial establishment.

With so many witnesses, it should have been an open and shut case. Instead, the 12-man Supreme Court jury acquitted young Audrey, who walked free to the dismay of the prosecution and the cheers of the packed public gallery and assembled throng outside.

The real defence had begun well before the trial even started. Audrey’s crafty lawyer Arthur Haynes fed juicy titbits to a gossip-hungry press to turn the court of public opinion in her favour under “the unwritten law” of a justly vengeful woman jilted by a scoundrel. Cyril, a ship’s engineer from the UK, had no family and few friends to testify to his character.

Arthur Haynes and the Smoking Gun brings this ripping tale to full-blooded life.

Writer and Theatre 180 founder Jenny Davis has drawn on trial transcripts, police interviews, press coverage, archival letters, photos and Leigh Straw’s wonderful book The Ballroom Murder (Fremantle Press) to inhabit the fascinating ambiguities of this case.

Just as history is an unreliable witness, the black-and white verdict masks the murky grey at the heart of the case. Under director Stuart Halusz, the play flicks between conflicting accounts of how a young relationship came to such a violent, tragic end.

This is all set against the context of the seismic social changes of the rebellious Roaring 20s after the traumas of the Great War and Spanish Flu epidemic.

Henderson and Hamilton, both recent WAAPA graduates, are wonderful as the fateful young couple Audrey and Cyril. Veteran stage artist and former WAAPA head of performance Andrew Lewis is every bit the wily defence lawyer Arthur Haynes as events are reconstructed for the benefit of the jury/audience.

All three actors adroitly juggle multiple other roles as Audery’s troubled parents and sundry police investigators, neighbours, friends and shipmates. They each smoothly switch from one character to another on stage as seamlessly as they slip on a different hat or coat. The cumulative effect of this repeated sleight-of-hand shift from character to character heightens the ambiguity of their perspectives and the veracity of their recollections.

Ingrid Zurzolo’s elegant period costumes evoke the dapper flapper look of the era, but it wouldn’t be the ‘20s without the devilishly seductive jazz music performed by the ever-stylish Ali Bodycoat and the Smoking Guns led by music director Craig Skelton.

In between jazz standards like Ain’t Misbehavin’, the beguiling tune that escorts us through the show is Skelton’s self-penned Love is a Smoking Gun (with lyrics by the versatile Halusz, who also designed and built the very adaptable sets). The song – to be recorded for future performances – is as intoxicating as a whiskey highball and smooth as a lover’s cheek on a pillow.

From sepia to the stage, the integration of programmed visuals and sound from Ben Collins and Josephine Jay bring to life the archival 1920s imagery as performance backdrops. With lighting by Aaron Stork, Audery and Cyril play out their relationship against scenic views of Kings Park, Perth Zoo, Freo Harbour and other haunts. Seeing the old tramline to South Beach is sure to unlock nostalgic musings on things loved and now forever lost.

After this sold-out short season at Government House to mark the 100^th anniversary, Arthur Haynes and the Smoking Gun returns early next year to the Como Theatre.

It is a special thing that Theatre 180 has built up over recent years with its “cine-plays” that combine the unique power of live performance with cinematic backdrops of archival footage, images and film to re-animate WA history for new audiences.

Other shows in the Theatre 180 kitbag include 21 Hearts: Vivian Bullwinkel and the Nurses of the Vyner Brooke, Sydney II: Lost and Found and A.B. Facey’s Australian classic A Fortunate Life. Coming soon is another ripsnorter WA story in Catalpa: Flight to Freedom, about the audacious 19^th century Fenian escape from Fremantle.

Arthur Haynes and the Smoking Gun returns next year at the Como Theatre from March 12-15. Tickets available here.