Rosie (Tara Canton) rifles through dresses hanging on a rack in a hotel room and holds a fuchsia one up as she snaps a selfie.

It’s 5.36am, and a shower runs in the bathroom of a heritage hotel room. “Arrgh!’’ A woman comes out in a towel and screams. She is no other than Edith (Mel Dodge), who that day is going to be appointed the prime minister, replacing her late father.

But Edith’s husband and her management team – including her usual make-up artist ‒ are stranded by fog and so Rosie, a 23-year-old from the David Jones cosmetics counter, is pulled in to transform the world leader and get her ready. [More]

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The art of distilling a wide-reaching story into a very small-cast play has become a necessity for playwrights wanting their work to be professionally produced live on stage. The plot embedded in Monument, by Melbourne playwright Emily Sheehan, could have been an eight-hander with a composite set allowing for multiple locations holding scenes of present action and past experiences. It could even be expanded into a TV series, an inter-generational political drama pitting public perception against private realities.

Instead we are in a plush hotel room, ingeniously designed for the exacting requirements of the Circa Two stage by Ian Harman, with lighting by Talya Pilcher. A young make-up artist, Rosie, arrives with all her gear and freaks out Edith Aldridge as she emerges from a steamy bathroom in her undies.

It’s quickly established that Rosie’s job is to prepare Edith for the media event that will celebrate her installation as the youngest-ever woman prime minister of her country – one based on Australia, given electorate seats only are implied. It will emerge she is replacing her recently deceased father, having stood in the by-election for his electorate seat, and won.

Quite how that also makes her the PM is a question a miniseries version might answer. If she was already an MP and elevated to the leadership by party vote, has she changed her electorate mid-term to run in the by-election? If so, wouldn’t that also require a by-election in the seat she has vacated? And if she was not already a government MP, how could she possibly have been instantly elevated to party leader? In this two-hander play, references to maintaining consistency and stability in testing times are all I catch by way of an inadequate explanation.  

But such arcane details are not the play’s focus. At first blush, Monument seems to be about the superficial requirements of a world where ‘image’ counts more than substance. In counterpoint to the make-up process, however, the stripping back of public-facing personas reveals more complex realities beneath.

Mel Dodge’s Edith is understandably stressed by the failure of her support team to arrive, thanks to a heavy fog stranding them at their airport. She vacillates between short-tempered fear-based arrogance, credible charm and actual sincerity in a way that reflects many public figures. One minute she seems out of her depth, even to the point of throwing a tantrum; the next we believe she is equal to the challenge ahead.

Tara Canton’s spot-on Rosie perfectly captures her generation’s obsessive preoccupation with beauty products, fashion and compulsive shopping by Afterpay and multiple similar ‘buy now pay later’ schemes. She is also into ‘self improvement’, which may be the source of the pearls of wisdom she offers Edith at critical moments. The dramatic impacts of stand-off moments of silence between them attest to how much we’ve become invested in them.

Compelled by the countdown to the impending photoshoot – “Everything is riding on this day!” – the status of each woman in their evolving relationship seesaws as they judge each other and themselves. Then there are the men in their lives: Edith’s father and her husband, Adam; Rosie’s boyfriend, Johnny, whose birthday dinner is planned for tonight. Each time they are mentioned, our compulsion to assess, judge and align with either Rosie or Edith gets a nudge.  

Alongside the feminist politics, economic principles are interrogated. Monopoly is a recurring motif with Edith pushing the importance of buying every property you land on in order to win at all costs. While Rosie questions the ethics of that, she has strong opinions on the number of skin care products you need to buy in order to look natural.

As seamlessly directed by Lyndee-Jane Rutherford, we are the mirror both women look into, to evaluate themselves. Speaking of which, Rosie offers an interesting perspective on the difference between doing your own makeup in a mirror versus having it done by a makeup artist. (Might a similar comparison be made between watch a drama on screen and experiencing it in a theatre?)

Two questions have to be answered as the deadline looms: should Edith deliver the speech she has been trying to rehearse, and which dress should she wear? A shocking twist at the end provokes a surprise ending.

There is a lot to ponder in the aftermath – for example, why is it called Monument? It may relate to the planned statue of the late great father and/or the indelible legacies of the photos about to be taken and televised address to the nation that begins as the play fade to blackout.

Described in publicity as “Succession meets Barbie”, Monument will appeal across generations, obviously to women and also men who may relate to them as partners or politicians.

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