If it wasn’t obvious by now, Betzien’s analysis of an education system in decline is a grim, even hopeless one. Perhaps wisely for an ‘issue’ play, however, she has chosen comedy rather than drama as her vehicle. In terms of genre, the play sits somewhere between satire and farce, the latter form especially evident in its archetypal characters and structure of intensifying chaos. Betzien writes a decent joke, and draws out the inherent absurdity of the neoliberalised classroom with relish, but it’s best not to think about any of it too deeply. Loose ends, redundancies, and plot holes abound. As with Betzien’s 2015 play, Mortido, co-produced by State Theatre Company SA and Belvoir, Chalkface feels a couple of redrafts short of being stage-ready.

Dramaturgically, the problem is that Betzien has a theme but no story and thus must pad out the proceedings with a whole lot of more or less unconnected incident. At least two subplots – one involving the pregnancy of the slow-witted Denise (Susan Prior), the other hanging on Steve’s paranoid belief that he’s being stalked by a disgruntled parent (sorry, ‘client’) – go nowhere. Where characters are not simply superfluous, they mostly fail to grow or change in interesting (or credible) ways.

Catherine McClements and Stephanie Somerville in Chalkface (photo by Matt Byrne)

To their credit, the cast make the most of what they have to work with, offering sympathetically broad performances. McClements, deliciously salty, utterly convinces as a once-idealistic educator turned world-weary cynic by years of institutional indifference and a creeping sense of vocational futility. Playing her foil Anna – a kind of ghost of her former, still hopeful self – Somerville manages to transcend the part’s limitations to find genuine nuance amid the grating optimism. O’Keefe is a suitably repellent principal (interestingly, Betzien resists what must have been a temptation to imbue the role with #MeToo-ish sleaze), and Ny consistently amuses as the stickler for procedure with a near-fetish for passive-aggressive notices. Juanta and Prior round out the ensemble with similarly energetic performances, although both look adrift at times, not unaware, I suspect, of the essential redundancy of their parts.

Although her solutions to the problem of a sometimes-overpopulated stage aren’t necessarily elegant, Jessica Arthur’s direction is for the most part impressive. For a longish play – one hour and forty-five minutes without interval – Chalkface never feels long, maintaining throughout the agility and momentum demanded by farce. In the end, while it’s tempting to think the unruliness of the play, as it stands, is a deliberate mirror of life at West Vale, I think it’s more true to say that Betzien has some homework ahead of her if she’s to mould Chalkface into something more cogent. In the meantime, while the laughter will no doubt prove cathartic for the teachers and parents of school-aged children in the audience, for the rest of us the play should at least serve as a wake-up call – and an entertaining, if frustratingly underdeveloped, one at that.

Chalkface is a production from State Theatre Company South Australia and Sydney Theatre Company. It plays in Adelaide at Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre until 20 August 2022; at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House from 15 September to 29 October; at the Riverside Theatre from 3 to 5 November; and at the Canberra Centre from 9 to 12 November. Performance attended: 9 August.