Archive | May, 2022

Before the Meeting

28 May

All addicts are liars. Or so says one of the characters in Adam Bock’s Before the Meeting.

A play about “lying” needs as its basis truthfulness – and finds it in this beautiful production by director Kim Hardwick.

We’re in the basement of a church, waiting for an A.A meeting. Is this truth? It’s certainly what truth feels like. The truth is the cleaning of cups, the filling up of the coffee urn, the putting out of chairs. Truth is how we treat each other.

We gently meet the characters as they prepare for meetings. We learn about the challenges each faces, a little of their backstory – and there’s a sense of foreboding, that all might come undone. And, by now, we deeply care about these people.

The performances are terrific. Jane Phegan as Gail is superb, and her monologue, a sharing of the gift she has found in AA, is a magnificent mix of positivity and hesitancy. Tim Walker as Tim offers a poignant portrait of an uncertain young man whose potential is so painfully obvious that you yearn for its fulfilment. Tim McGarry as Ronny delivers a delightful mix of the curmudgeonly and the good humoured. Alex Malone’s Nicole is a wonderful portrayal of youthful hope battling present realities. Her response to the play’s one violent moment is performance gold. Ariadne Sgouros’ cameo powerfully encapsulates the rage we feel at our own powerlessness in the face of the failings of others.

The play doesn’t try to give many reasons why people become addicts. It just shows us what it is to be one. As Gail says (and I’m paraphrasing) people who drink get it wrong. I drink because I have problems? No. I have problems because I drink.

There’s a beautiful sense of an empowerment in feeling it’s best not to focus too much on what has happened to us. There’s something nice about hearing the stories of people who were arseholes. The stories of victims make us long for change, but the stories of arseholes –  because they’re being shared honestly – make us realise change is possible.

Gail says several times she doesn’t know why AA works for her. But it does. So she keeps coming. It’s a blessed victory of pragmatism over any theory.

These people are here for each other, and ultimately, the play is a deeply moving paean to what community can do.

Paul Gilchrist

Before the Meeting by Adam Bock

Seymour Centre until 11 June

www.seymourcentre.com

Image by Danielle Lyonne

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Hercule Poirot’s First Case

26 May

When considering who is the culprit responsible for the crime that is detective fiction, Agatha Christie is a prime suspect.

Not that she originated the fraud; Wilkie Collins and Conan Doyle were guilty long before her.

But she’s probably the most notorious perpetrator of detective fiction.

However, I’m more of the blame-society-rather-than-the-felon school of analysis. Why are these tales (in which the most important event, a murder, is relegated to backstory) so enormously popular?

This humble investigator proposes that the rising rate of detective fiction in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century was the direct consequence of three social developments:

1. Increased violence in rapidly growing urban populations;

2. Increased reportage of this violence by an expanding popular press;

3. And, most crucially, the desire to counter the above disturbing developments with the best tool at hand: logical and scientific reasoning (which had, ironically, ignited the Industrial Revolution and its attendant population explosion in the first place.)   

Detective fiction says the world is crazily chaotic and frighteningly violent – but here’s an extraordinarily rational individual who will restore order.

In comedy, order is often restored by a marriage (or something dreadfully like it). In crime, order is restored by an arrest. So, as it’s been quipped previously, it’s either “Dear Reader, I married him” or “The butler did it.” (Though, in this play, I should point out, he doesn’t.)

I expected this production to be a comedy, which is simply indicative of my inability to draw a logical conclusion from the available (marketing) evidence.

Hercule Poirot’s First Case is detective fiction, though the script’s fast pace, brought to the fore by some deft work by director Tom Massey, makes it an even closer cousin to comedy than such plays usually are. Giggles and guesswork make this an engaging show.

The title is a misnomer. It’s not Poirot’s first case. Played by Peter Gizariotis with charm, Poirot arrives in the story fully formed. It’s Poirot’s first case in that the script by Jon Jory is based on Agatha Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. For aficionados of detective fiction, this might be a rare treat.

Veronica Kaye

Hercule Poirot’s First Case by Jon Jory, based on an Agatha Christie novel.

Genesian Theatre until July 2

www.genesiantheatre.com.au

Image by Tom Massey

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A Hundred Words For Snow

19 May

This is a brilliant presentation of a brilliant play.

In Tatty Hennessy’s beautifully rich monologue, Rory has just lost her father. Before an untimely accident, he’d been planning to take her to the North Pole…..so teenage Rory decides the next best thing is to take his ashes there.

Her journey of discovery – into a lonely world of ice and cold, and unexpected beauty – is a gloriously gentle, deeply moving metaphor for grief.

Both Rory’s father and her younger self were enamoured by tales of the early polar explorers, men desperate to reach the Pole before modern technology reduced the ordeal to a difficult, but ultimately doable, tourist jaunt. These men who dared the unknown, the vast blank spaces on the map, showed extraordinary resilience, extraordinary hubris, and many died horribly. Rory is suitably fascinated by both their strength and their stupidity.

For all their hardship, much of the blank space they aimed to conquer had been traversed before. Perhaps if they’d spoken to the Inuit people, instead of dismissing them as savages, their journeys might have been easier.

But first times will be experienced as such.

Much of life consists of experiencing for the first time what’s in actuality being experienced for the billionth time. We walk the road alone, but the road is well trodden. (It’s a phenomena Rory herself acknowledges, not about her grief, but about her first serious sexual encounter; for all its uniqueness for her, it’s been experienced by all who came before.)

Eddie Pattison is magnificent as Rory, capturing her sadness, her fear, her humour, and her wonder, and creating a character so complete it feels less like a performance than an embodiment. Director Gavin Roach’s touch is light and wise, allowing this piece to achieve the dramatic miracle: the realisation of the individual that intimates the universal.    

Paul Gilchrist

A Hundred Words For Snow by Tatty Hennessy

Flight Path Theatre until 28 May

https://www.flightpaththeatre.org/whats-on/a-hundred-words-for-snow

Images: Cameron Grant (Parenthesy)

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How To Live (After You Die)

14 May

This is simply a sharing; Lynette Wallworth tells us of her time in a Christian cult.

She stands alone on stage, and with the aid of only slides and a little music, she shares how at eighteen she succumbed to the cult – and then suffered four miserable years until she broke free.

She speaks with intelligence and wisdom. Her tale is beautifully discursive, as she weaves in anecdotes from her artistic work with indigenous people from around the globe. The spiritual experiences she relates, both her own and other people’s, are rich and life-affirming. They’re a powerful counterpoint to the tale of the cult.

Initially innocuous, but ultimately insidious, the charismatic cult in suburban Sydney encapsulates two ways in which the grand religious tradition can be corrupted.  

Wallworth admits to being seduced by the sweet promise of simplicity, that by joining the community the dreadful burden of choice would be lifted from her. We feel only sympathy, knowing in our hearts how tempting the abrogation of responsibility can be.

In contrast, the desire for power that mars the community is more difficult to forgive.  Must it always be such, that God is found in the Desert, but in carrying Her back to the City, joy and honesty sour to self-assertion and manipulation?

As Wallworth spoke of her eventual liberation from the cult, I was in tears.

And the gentle words of the nun who helped save her?  

Of course, to repeat those words here would be a spoiler, but they’re a tender reminder of the nature of God and what She would truly want for us.

Veronica Kaye

How To Live (After You Die)

Written, directed and performed by Lynette Wallworth

Playhouse, Sydney Opera House

Until Sat 14 May

https://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/events/whats-on/unwrapped/2022/how-to-live.html

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a body is all that remains

12 May

A single performer stands on a bare, dimly lit stage. He speaks to us in a soft, gentle voice. There is a soundscape of lapping water.

This is Lungol Wekina, an indigenous Papua New Guinean storyteller. He shares with us the brutal impact of colonisation on his people and his desire for connection with his ancestors.

Is it possible to be guilty of writing a spoiler in discussing a show such us this? You might think not, but you might be wrong.

Wekina speaks of his people drowning. Or, more precisely, of being made to feel they have always been drowning.

The culprit? “The Project”.

It’s an interesting choice of phrase. It’s colonialism. It’s capitalism. And it suggests deliberate intention.

There’s beautiful poetry in Wekina’s telling – sparse language, but rich, with seemingly simple figurative language that gradually blossoms into glorious fullness.

Initially, the monologue is thick with the abstract language of cultural studies, the terminology of post-colonial theory. This is a tendency that’s become almost conventional in contemporary theatre – but Wekina does something wonderful with it. His sharing is short on specifics, on the concrete – and that’s his point: it’s gone. All gone. Taken from him.

He suggests the colonisers burnt down his people’s library, destroying their cultural heritage. But he acknowledges this is a metaphor, just a metaphor, and one he has built from the language of the oppressor. That is their power.

So he builds another metaphor, this time of the dancer. In her movements, and in her voice, the dancer encapsulates Wekina’s cultural heritage, his connection with his ancestors. He tells us, that after the shocking violence of first contact between indigenous people and the colonisers, the Project became more insidious, slipping gently on stage with the dancer, and slowly replacing her steps, her voice, with its own.

The old world is lost. The dance is lost.

But the motif of the dancer facilitates another perspective. As Yeats observed (sort of) how can you tell the dance from the dancer?   

And by now the stage is no longer dimly lit. There is the performer, and only the performer, in full light. And, as he speaks in his gentle voice, he ever so subtly evokes the movement of the dance.

If I say more, I feel I will be guilty of a spoiler.

I say only this: the finale is poignant and sorrowful. But it’s also hopeful, a vision of connection … with ancestors … and with all humankind.  Because what do we share?

Paul Gilchrist

a body is all that remains

written and performed by Lungol Wekina

as part of the Everything but the Kitchen Sink Festival

Flight Path Theatre until Thurs 12 May ( the festival runs to Fri 13)

https://www.flightpaththeatre.org/whats-on/everything-but-the-kitchen-sink

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Silenced

10 May

Linda Nicholls-Gidley’s Silenced explores how women have been robbed of voice and the necessity of permitting them to speak.

Silenced is verbatim theatre, constructed from the testament of women, and performed by an ensemble of six actors.

Director Carly Fisher elicits good performances from her entire cast – Nola Bartolo, Chanika Desilva, Mariama Whitton, Sonya Kerr, Deborah Faye Lee and Nicholls-Gidley – and in combination with a fascinatingly unconventional script, this is powerful, thought-provoking theatre.

At times, it feels as though an oddly undramatic choice predominates. A group of women share their stories of being silenced. There is no tension between these women. Their stories are not detailed anecdotes, but rather abstractions, generalisations, sometimes expressed in distancing theoretical language. It’s as though this avoidance of the specific is an enactment of one of the more pernicious ways in which dissent is silenced – by reducing it to an inarticulate rage. But this linguistic choice serves another purpose; the abstract language creates a hard, unforgiving surface, like ice over a frozen lake – and the moment a skate breaks through the emotional shock is palpable. Nicholls-Gidley beautifully performs two heartrending monologues, one on prejudices regarding body weight, and another on post-natal depression. With affecting poignancy, Kerr presents another on the need to plan a secret escape route from a threatening male. Desilva shares an exuberantly satirical assertion that the character she portrays will neither be defined by her ethnic heritage nor denied its riches.

The dominant stylistic choice is also disrupted in other ways. Comic skits revisit advertising of the past, holding up historical misogyny for gleeful inspection and asking us whether reports of its death are indeed overstated.  On another occasion, the script returns to conventional dramatic form, positing opposing voices as the women discuss the behaviour of a female work colleague – is she justly assertive or just aggressive? (Another tension the script posits is between different types of silence, that which is chosen, such as meditation, in contrast with that which is enforced. Indeed the theme of silence and speech is such a gloriously rich field that the play ensures lively post show discussion: Is being allowed to speak the equivalent of being heard? Is our purpose in speaking to share our stories, to represent our truth, or is speech more like a tool we employ to impact the world, closer kin to hammer than camera? And are there times when silence is actually a moral obligation? A piece of theatre that evokes these questions is a treasure.)

But perhaps, on the simplest level, a group of women sharing their stories with one another is an invaluable model of what our society desperately needs –  a commitment to listening.

Paul Gilchrist

Silenced by Linda Nicholls-Gidley

Flight Path Theatre until Fri May 13 (as part of the Everything But the Kitchen Sink Festival)

https://www.flightpaththeatre.org

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Son of Byblos

9 May

This is exciting premiere Australian work, and Belvoir’s 25A and Brave New Word should be congratulated.

Though new work, I’ve had the privilege of reading the script in an earlier incarnation; in 2019, when it was shortlisted for the Silver Gull Play Award.

This is not the same play, though it’s a close kissing cousin. James Elazzi’s engaging story of a young gay man living in a community reluctant to accept homosexuality has morphed since I first read it. It has opened up, and is now an ambiguous, provocative piece of theatre.

And though I’ve been fortunate enough to see brief glimpses of this stimulating work in its development, I’m still very distant from it.

An initial response might be to bristle at potential anachronisms. Is the Lebanese Australian Christian community still in denial? Do young members of this community still engage in duplicitous behaviour in order to protect themselves? I have absolutely no idea.

Which posits the interesting question: Is the role of the playwright to document society? And, if so, what technical and moral attributes would be required of them to do this effectively? And what sort of awareness, both in terms of aesthetics and epistemology, would the audience of such a work need? Watching a play like this, do I say “Well, that’s the Lebanese Australian Christian community” or do I postpone judgement, counting this play as merely the equivalent of a single anecdote from someone I assume is an insider?

In the play, the young protagonist, Adam, has sexual encounters with strangers in public toilets. This is a powerful image of marginalisation and the reckless desperation it engenders. Curiously, these are the only moments in the production not presented in a naturalist mode: the actor stands alone on stage simulating a sexual act, while all sound is pre-recorded and the other male participant is physically absent. Is it the anomalous nature of this act in Adam’s otherwise conventional life that is being suggested? Probably – because it’s not especially suggestive of sex. Are contemporary audiences not ready for more vivid representations of this type of anonymous sex? See my earlier comments on anachronism.  

Director Anna Jahjah has elicited wonderful performances from her cast, each presenting an individual wrenched in opposing directions, torn by the desire to reject their community’s unpalatable demands while simultaneously longing to hold that community together. Mansoor Noor’s Adam is a brilliantly complex portrayal of a young man morally disfigured by pain, a protagonist who evokes equal parts sympathy and antipathy.  Adam’s treatment of the two young women in his life is disturbing to watch. His cousin Claire also attempts to navigate the communal myopia, and Kate Bookallil plays her with both a thrilling waspishness and intense vulnerability. Angela, Adam’s ex-girlfriend, seeks sense and security in all the duplicity and deliberate obtuseness, with Violette Ayad’s fascinating portrayal endowing her with both dignity and fragility. Deborah Galanos plays Adam’s mother, Carol, with a performance balanced delicately between vivacity and anger. Simon Elrahi’s John is frustrated paternal expectation engaged in a gripping battle with loving acceptance.

Social documentation? The eternal challenge of individuality within community? Go and choose.

Paul Gilchrist

Son of Byblos by James Elazzi

Downstairs Belvoir until 21st May

belvoir.com.au

photo credit @davidhooley

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