By Shelby Brooks
Emerald’s Mandy McGarrigle and Julie Day from Clematis have been friends for four decades, with their bond cemented during an international tour of Julie’s play Come Back for Light Refreshments After the Service in the 1980s.
This month, their creative connection has been reinvigorated by Mandy’s revival of the play for Emerald’s Gemco Players Theatre.
Julie grew up in the spotlight, starting ballet at a young age, and soon making a name for herself in the Australian professional theatre scene of the 1950s and 1960s.
Highlights include My Fair Lady in 1959, West Side Story in 1960, Liesl in the 1961 Australian production of The Sound of Music, The Nurse in The Australian Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet and long running TV show Neighbours.
Forty-five years ago, Julie moved to Clematis to raise her family and has called the hills home ever since.
Through her son, Julie met teenager Mandy McGarrigle.
Growing up in Emerald, Mandy found her place in the theatre community behind the curtain.
At 14, Mandy operated the lights for Gemco Players’ first production in 1979 after attending the first meeting of the theatre group.
Mandy went on to study performing arts at Deakin University, preferring to be behind the scenes of the theatre in directing and stage managing roles.
It was around that time Julie called her up, asking Mandy if she knew anyone who owned a van.
“Julie was putting on this play and said to me ‘do you know anyone with a big van? I have to take this play to Adelaide’,” Mandy said.
“And I said ‘yeah, me’.
“We stuffed all the sets and props into the back of the van and we drove to Adelaide for the Fringe.”
The play was Come Back for Light Refreshments After the Service, which Julie had written and was doing well in its first iteration in Melbourne.
“It came from my own kitchen and how different people would come in and we would be solving our problems while we were preparing dinners – multitasking, I suppose,” Julie explained.
“I thought I’d like to do a play about women doing those things but then at the end of it there would be food that could be given to the audience.
“The audience would now become the mourners who would be coming to the funeral service.”
Following great reviews in South Australia, the play went international to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, winning the Fringe Award for Excellence.
It was published in 1997 and has since been performed by amateur companies as far-flung as England, Queensland, Canberra and Castlemaine.
Mandy has only returned home to Emerald in January this year after spending 23 years in Tasmania.
Within weeks of returning to the hills, Mandy was back on the Gemco Players’ committee and was asked to choose a play she wanted to direct this year.
“Doing this show was an obvious choice for me when I came back to Emerald and started hanging out with Julie again,” Mandy said.
Mandy describes Come Back for Light Refreshments After the Service as a humorous drama, from one moment to the next you could be laughing or crying.
“It’s beautifully written,” Mandy said.
“It’s almost like poetry, it has a poetic flow to it.”
But the desire to stage this production goes deeper than mere appreciation of a well-written script.
“Julie is one of my favourite people in the whole world,” Mandy said.
“She means an awful lot to me.”
Julie said she was thrilled to bits when Mandy told her the play was being revived.
“When you get to 82, you realise you become sort of invisible,” Julie said.
“Just any kind of recognition is fabulous and Mandy is giving me wonderful recognition.
“I’m so thrilled she has moved back into Emerald. It’s been lifesaving to me.”
The pair isn’t ruling out future theatre collaborations in the future.
“That would be wonderful, wouldn’t it?” Julie said.
