Type – Poetry performance
If you liked – Under Milk Wood, Shakespearean soliloquies, Grizabella’s Memory
Four Quartets: Provides an effective catharsis for our times
Experiencing the live performance of T.S. Eliot’s long, modernist poem Four Quartets is a bit like staring at Dali’s painting The Persistence of Memory. You need to know a bit of history, a bit about art, a bit about the artist, and the ability to focus on and interpret complex and layered content. Sounds daunting, but the rewards are worth the effort.
Director Patrick Klavins phrases it as an invitation to “pause, breathe and reflect”, and that’s as good a reason as any to experience Four Quartets. Step out of the quotidian frenzy of economic and political doomsaying, and spend an hour or so contemplating those really BIG concepts of life, time, and death, through a lens of modern mysticism.
The work is divided into four ‘chapters’, presented in soliloquy style by four very capable actors who each bring their own style and personality to the delivery, enlivening the poetry and bringing something of a narrative to the abstraction. Sandie Eldridge, Charles Mayer, Kaivu Suvarna, and Grace Stamnas manage the shifting tones and styles well, moving from the conversational to the rhetorical to the deeply self reflective, and back again. The poems have multiple humanistic and mystic themes that intertwine with each other, all revolving around the relationship between time and eternity. If our memories allow us to understand life, then way to discover eternity is through memory, understanding the past by understanding ‘the timeless present’. I said it was mystical.
Bella Saltearn’s set provides literally the paint-spattered canvas upon which the actors create meaning, their costumes making them either tradespeople or peasants. Either way these are working people not academics in ivory towers. Simple but effective lighting from Topaz Marlay-Cole uses a single bulb to enlighten, or darken, or flicker according to the needs of the moment.
Is Four Quartets Worth Seeing in Sydney?
Some critics urge us to appreciate Eliot even if we don’t agree with him, to admire his sophisticated language skills, the form, the beauty of the language itself. Fair enough, I say, although we probably need one of those digital plaques alongside his works to contextualise some of the outdated concepts. For me, his other more bleak and nihilistic poems hit the mark: The Wasteland, The Lovesong of J. Alfred Proofrock, The Hollow Men, (also the perfect title for the classic Working Dog satirical comedy series). The dry bitter humour and hopelessness of these works provide a more effective catharsis for our times.
If he were alive today one wonders just how much faith Eliot might have retained in his Anglo-Catholic belief in ‘the power of love’ or Christ as a redeemer of humankind. Students of English literature, philosophy and religion can debate this long into the night.
Tickets and Practical Info for Four Quartets in Sydney 🎟️
Written By T S Eliot
Directed by Patrick Klavins
Presented by The Wounded Surgeon
Old Fitz, Woolloomooloo
Final performance tonight, 20 March 2026, 9.15pm
