Theatre Red

One of the characters asks “Does Art make us virtuous?”  The play answers “No.” Clearly.

At least three of the four characters have claims to being literary men, but Art has not helped them. They bully, they threaten, they ignore; they are not good. [Though they are certainly engaging, and wonderfully played by Andrew Buchanan, Peter Carroll, John Gaden and Steven Rooke.]

It’s not the ‘virtuous’ in “Does Art make us virtuous?” that Pinter is exploring. It is the ‘us’.

No Man’s Land is about continuity in character. Its argument is that we’re not all of a piece. Who we are depends on who we are with. Character is fluid. It is formed by power relations.

Once Pinter was asked by an actor about the back history of  a character.  He replied, ‘Mind your own fucking business!’ Not that the past is unimportant. It is – vitally – but as an extension of the battleground that is the present.

This present is dismaying, but oddly uplifting. For if character is not fixed – and Michael Gow leads his extraordinary ensemble through a tour de force of possibilities – than the future could be a different place than both the disputed past and the menacing present.

 The play begins with the down and out Spooner [Peter Carroll] telling Hirst [John Gaden]  “You are too kind.” He repeats it, several times. It remains a lie.

Pinter’s work will not make us any kinder. No Art will. But No Man’s Land reminds us that it’s an option.

 Veronica Kaye

No Man’s Land

Sydney Theatre Company, Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House

Until 11/12

“Playwrights are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Percy B Shelley.

Ok, Shelley actually wrote “poets”, not “playwrights”, but then he wasn’t at New Theatre last night for the opening of Ben Elton’s Gasping. [Though, with the plethora of penis jokes, and a first name like his, he would’ve been right at home.]

Elton’s play is a powerful satire on greed, and its ostensible target is Big Business.

Director Helen Tonkin elicits engaging performances from her entire cast, with Oliver Wenn, Julia Kennedy Scott and Natalie Rees the comic standouts.

Comedy empowers. When someone laughs, as J M Barrie would have it, a fairy is born. And those little fuckers are magic, and they’re going to fix up the mess we’ve made of this world.

Ok, I don’t actually believe in fairies. Because we are the fairies, and when we laugh, the dead weight of habit is lifted from us, and we can fly.

Elton’s satire brings in to full focus not just imagined injustices, but also very real ones, and targets not just Big Business, but all those complicit in the society that fosters it. Comedy makes us feel we’re strong enough to change this world.

Now, have we got the will?

 Veronica Kaye

Gasping

New Theatre

16 Nov to 10 Dec

http://newtheatre.org.au/

Generally, I try not to call out at the theatre. Over time, I’ve come to appreciate that there are some rules: The actors get to talk. I don’t.

But there was a moment in Justin Fleming’s Coup d’Etat when I was sorely tempted to stop playing this game. Set in Malaysia at a time of legal crisis, and peopled by characters of various ethnicities, one scene features an argument about the way different cultures treat women. After accusing each other of wilful exaggeration and gross simplification, the characters suddenly all accept a wilful exaggeration and gross simplification.

This is not a criticism. Stick with me.

I’m a sucker for a good ending. This play has one. By way of explanation:

My Indulgent Analogy No. 1. Enter the last digit of the combination. The door of the safe finally swings open. The treasure inside is revealed. The treasure of Coup d’Etat is its powerful final image, encapsulating the idea explored by the play. That idea is laws [and all other human made tools, such as culture] are beautifully brave attempts to do the impossible – to impose structure on the wildness of life.

 My Indulgent Analogy No. 2. When the holiday cruise ship of childhood, SS Certainty, finally sinks, we are all left to swim. Some of us try our best to imagine we’re actually doing laps in a pool. There are lanes. We can always touch bottom. It may be dull, but there’s a purpose, and it’s good for us, and, anyway, soon we’ll be out of the water and in the change room having a warm shower. Others accept it’s more like swimming in the open ocean. We have no idea which direction to go. There are unfathomable depths below. The sharks are gathering, and if they are don’t take us, exhaustion or the cold inevitably will.

Director Suzanne Millar elicits engaging performances from the entire cast, especially Cat Martin’s perfectly pitched portrayal of a woman who carries the fear of the ocean swim.

So why do I like a good ending? They’re beautifully brave attempts to do the impossible. And why, at that moment of wilful exaggeration and gross simplification, didn’t I call out? Because Fleming knows what he’s doing. He’s reminding us there may not be a warm shower waiting after all.

 Veronica Kaye

Coup d’Etat

November 8 – 13, Parramatta Riverside Theatres.

November 14 – 21, NIDA Parade Playhouse.

http://www.bakehousetheatresydney.com/coupdetat.htm