Archive | May, 2025

Heaven

19 May

This is a beautiful play, beautifully presented.

Written by Irish writer Eugene O’Brien, it tells the story of a middle-aged couple at a crisis point, and it does so with humour and insight.

Kate Gaul’s direction is wonderfully simple, unaffected in a way that allows the brilliance of the writing and performance to shine.

The piece is constructed from two intertwining monologues. Husband and wife Mal and Mairead attend a family wedding. The couple seem to get on well, but they’re never shown speaking to each other because each is in the process of exploring something that will challenge their relationship. Fitting the setting, that challenge is sexual.

Mairead has met an old flame, the man with whom, in her twenties, she had the best sex of her life. Mal is confronting his repressed homosexual desires.

The title? Heaven? Do they both seek a joy that will utterly transcend their merely comfortable relationship? Have both become aware that Eternity fast approaches, with its mysterious, unsatisfying promise of either oblivion or pleasures of a less certain nature?  

In contrast to the metaphysical connotations of the title, both characters use very physical metaphors to express their needs and doubts, underlining that they’re far from finished with this plane of existence. She asks is this where my 50 years has lead? He wonders whether he has the courage to enter the world below, the lower dimension.

Because of my peculiar (and un-Australian) penchant for digging into metaphor, I should make clear that the play is not in any way religious (except what it has in common with all serious philosophies: an awareness of the tension between our inner lives and our outward relationships.)

This is, however, modern Ireland, and the hand of Catholicism is still heavy. Mairead tells of going to England for an abortion. Mal’s sexual fantasies are couched in the language of his desire for Jesus, effectively suggesting the complexity of his emotional situation, its guilt and its passion.

As the couple, Lucy Miller and Noel Hodda are absolutely superb.

Miller’s Mairead is gloriously tough. She doesn’t edit her speech. She’s a proud playground bully. She’s utterly disdainful of her daughter’s choice of partner. Reflecting on the death of her abusive father, she hisses that cancer sometimes takes the right ones. She’s deeply sensual and unafraid to fulfill her needs. Yet, she never speaks a word against Mal. It’s a magnificently rounded portrait, strength sparring with uncertainty, delivered with captivating power.

Hodda’s Mal is gentler, softer – desirous of the direction Mairead gives his life. Hodda plays the humour of the-dag-who-dares with consummate skill, but also marvellously portrays the internal battle between desire and doubt.

It’s a temptation with a production like this to be so taken by the skill of the makers that you forget the meaning, that (to mangle Yeats) you fall in love with the dancers, and forget the dance. But this production – an exploration of the tension between our inner and outer worlds, epitomised in its presentation of a marriage under threat – achieves the perfect marriage between artistry and Art.   

Paul Gilchrist

Heaven by Eugene O’Brien

Presented by Bitchen Wolf

At the Loading Dock Qtopia, until May 31

qtopiasydney.com.au

Image by Alex Vaughan

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In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play

14 May

Written by American playwright Sarah Ruhl in 2009, this sits curiously between farce and something more serious. (I was going to write something more valuable, but who’s to say laughter isn’t worth more than all the world’s profundity?)

Set in late nineteenth century America, in a doctor’s residence and surgery, the play tells a tale of treating “hysteria” with the newly harnessed electricity. Dr Givings employs what we would call a vibrator, and his treatment is rather popular.

Though this farcical element is approached with true comic commitment by the cast, there’s a danger of it all slipping into a one-joke piece. We see the vibrator and its associated technology used on “patients” possibly a few too many times. (Though I have friends who would never tire of such a joke.)

And the basic conceit of the humour, that no-one seems to realise the “patients” are being sexually aroused to orgasm, is a challenging one to accept. Though the medical discourse of the time was dominated by myopic patriarchal attitudes, were the women themselves so very ignorant of their own bodies? Perhaps. Or perhaps the hegemonic discourse simply prevented open discussion. But theatre enables the representation of many discussions that would not otherwise be open. (It could be argued that’s part of its charm.)

But I guess it’s how the piece gains the first of its feminist credentials: if the diagnosis is that the female experience is so entirely dominated by patriarchal perspectives, then revolution is the only appropriate prescription.

And the piece gains its feminist credentials in other ways, representing aspects of the female experience that (still) could do with more cultural airtime. As well as orgasm, we’re shown breast feeding and the terrible fears of childbirth. As Catherine Givings says of the last of these experiences No rational person would go through this twice. This production also powerfully presents the anguish of child-raising, beginning with a desperate Catherine looking on helplessly as her new-born child just … won’t … stop … crying. She muses that it’s odd that Jesus was a man, one who supposedly gave his body in the eucharist, because it’s women who are eaten.

And this religious allusion leads me to consider the other great theme of the piece: the relationship between spirit and body. Electricity has long been associated with spirit, but in finally being harnessed, one more of the universe’s grand mysteries is reduced to a mere human tool. In the face of advancing scientific knowledge, what will become of other great mysteries, like love? Is love any more than pleasure? And is pleasure any more than mechanical? Will the brave new world of technology make us smaller? No, We will be Gods asserts Catherine, but in her lonely desperation she’s compared to a fallen angel. Ruhl builds on this motif, with characters making snow angels. And what is an angel? Spirit without body. Traditionally and conventionally, this is somehow seen as closer to the divine. Yet in the next room, we’re being shown the joy the body can offer. That body and spirit are not mutually exclusive is the salvation these characters must find – and the final (snowy) image of the play is glorious. 

Director Emma Whitehead elicits some terrific performances from her cast, and that’s no mean feat, considering the demands of a script constructed from such dissimilar genres. (Though the reading of the play I outline in the previous paragraph leaves me wondering if some genuine nudity might’ve been a good choice. I also wish the script had given some of the characters more lines to express their fears and enthusiasms, which would not only have made a wonderfully rich play even richer, but – counterintuitively – would have facilitated a quickening in pace that sometimes the production needs.)

Alyona Popova as Annie, Dr Givings’ assistant, gets too few lines, but with what she gets she displays fitting dignity and impressive poignancy. Ruva Shoko as Elizabeth, the wet nurse, has a slow build, but when she gets her big speech she is deeply moving.

Luke Visentin as Leo, the artist who is a male sufferer of “hysteria”, is delightfully exuberant.

Catherine is the heart and soul of the piece, and Sarah Greenwood grabs the opportunity and gives a performance that is utterly superb – funny, fraught and full of life-affirming energy.

Paul Gilchrist

In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play by Sarah Ruhl

At New Theatre until 17 May

newtheatre.org.au

Image by Bob Seary

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Various Characters

9 May

I’m not a fan of Australian theatre’s obsession with teenagers. For me, it suggests a tiresome childishness in our intellectual outlook, a mawkish nostalgia that resists adulthood, a fear of responsibility being allowed to trump the embracing of opportunity.

But I also know that childhood leaves no survivors*, and if you want to explore vulnerability (whatever its cause), the teenage years are a very good place to start.

And that’s what Šime Knežević does in his beautifully written Various Characters, directed with skilful subtlety by Victor Kalka.

Set in Western Sydney in the early 2000’s, most of the characters are teenagers.

Nina (Georgia Da Silva) has lost her mother and is living unhappily with her aunt. She desperately wants to visit her sister in Melbourne, but she doesn’t have the cash. The solution? Sell the dog. But she can’t sell it to just anyone; it has to go to a good home. Both touching and funny, this initial scene operates as a perfect symbolic introduction to the wider problems the characters face: insecurities that threaten to degenerate into desperation.

Knežević captures the teenage voice brilliantly (though some of the actors go a little overboard in their embodiment of youthful apprehension and would benefit from greater vocal projection.)

Da Silva, Maliyan Blair, Nashy MZ and Tate Wilkinson-Alexander as the teenagers capture the age’s enthusiasms and doubts, and give performances that are both amusing and affecting.

The two adult characters seem only a small step away from children, a powerful suggestion that the challenges the teenagers experience are ubiquitous. After all, this is ethnically diverse Western Sydney under a conservative government (and, some would say, a perpetually conservative mono-culture.)

Dog-purchaser and police officer Raoul expresses the confusion of a man who has somewhat unwillingly conformed to the hegemony. Tony Goh’s portrait is simultaneously comic and pathos-inducing.

Greta has lost her job, but there’s a market at Bigge Park and she hopes to kickstart a business venture with a stall selling Croatian food. She was born in Australia, but is proud of her heritage and dreams of a community open-hearted enough to embrace and celebrate diversity. Kate Bookallil as Greta gives a splendid performance, evoking magnificently the character’s fierce determination and quiet despair.

Paul Gilchrist

Various Characters by Šime Knežević

Presented by Plus Minus Productions, in association with Virginia Plain and Flight Path Theatre

At Flight Path until 17 May

flightpaththeatre.org

Image by Robert Miniter

*I haven’t been able to find the source of this quote.

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The Lover & The Dumb Waiter

8 May

Directed by Mark Kilmurry, this is an evening of two short works by the great Harold Pinter.

Everyone’s familiar with the famous Pinter pause, that cessation of dialogue that acknowledges the world’s incomprehensibility, and seems to respond with all the world’s malevolence.

These two works employ the Pinter pause sparingly, preferring instead a related technique: the gap in exposition.

Take The Dumb Waiter. Two hit men wait in a basement room for instructions regarding their next job. We don’t know who their target will be. We don’t know why they will be targeted. We don’t know who issues the instructions. The dumb waiter installed in the room delivers food orders as though from a café above, and we don’t know why these orders make the hit men so very anxious. Only one of these uncertainties is clarified in the course of the piece, but this clarification only births further uncertainties.

Kilmurry fully embraces the comic possibilities of the scenario, and Gareth Davies and Anthony Taufa play the hitmen with terrific humour. (If Tarantino hasn’t seen a good production of The Dumb Waiter, I’d be shocked.) But Davies and Taufa also poignantly convey a rising panic, a terror in the face of power structures they know exist but don’t understand.

And that’s what the gaps in exposition do: they invite us into a similarly disorientating, dangerous world; they ask us to consider whether it reflects our experience, as individuals who are neither impotent nor omnipotent, who suffer from arbitrary power but are also complicit in its tyranny.

If The Dumb Waiter is comic, The Lover is even more so. Richard and Sarah are husband and wife, but she openly has an afternoon lover. Davies and Nicole Da Silva present this surprising couple with a delicious straight-faced matter-of-factness. Both performers glory in the particularly middle-class language Pinter gifts these characters, a dialect that’s precise yet euphemistic, fussy yet biting. Having presented an unexpected but believable relationship, Pinter proceeds, in splendid comic scenes, to reveal its complexities. But he never does so completely, once again allowing gaps in exposition to invite (or is it necessitate?) our full engagement.

Romantic love is an odd thing. We like to think that in it we can be our true selves, but simultaneously we are playing a role, that of the lover, the projection of the desires of the Other. Like Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee, also first produced in 1962, The Lover expresses the collision of the desire for authenticity (the hallmark of the next two decades in Western culture) with the realisation that radical individuality might be a fantasy. Neither impotent nor omnipotent, we are complicit in the illusions from which we suffer – and our attempted solutions merely perpetuate those illusions.

Wonderfully performed and tremendously funny, this double bill is an excellent introduction to Pinter’s genius.

Paul Gilchrist

The Lover & The Dumb Waiter by Harold Pinter

At Ensemble until June 7

ensemble.com.au

Image by Prudence Upton

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IRL

7 May

Alexei has been chatting with Thaddeus on Messenger for ages, but they’ve never seen each other, and now it’s time to meet in real life. (IRL)

Alexei suggests Supernova for their first date. He arrives in his customary Disney princess-style outfit. Before their rendezvous, Thaddeus is tricked out of his clothes by a mysterious woman. Alexei comes to the rescue, but without revealing his identity.

It’s a crazy fun comic set-up that puts centre stage the concept of personal authenticity. When is it appropriate to play roles, and when should we just be ourselves? (Whatever the second of those two options means.)

As the two young lovers, Andrew Fraser and Leon Walshe are utterly charming, finding both the humour and heart in Lewis Treston’s beautiful script.

But I have to admit, it was the juxtaposition of this romantic comedy with a second story thread that I found utterly fascinating.

Alexei’s best friend, Taylor, is now a TV celebrity, working in America with some of the biggest names in the industry. She’s scheduled to speak at Supernova, but the pressure created by the inauthenticity of the role she’s asked to play becomes too much. In a glorious theatricality akin to Harper’s choice in Angels in America, Taylor opts out – not by entering a fridge like Kushner’s character, but by joining some tropical fish in the deep blue (which I’m guessing is an allusion to Finding Nemo.)

While psychologically AWOL, Taylor’s body is inhabited by Phoenix, a super villain with a strong family resemblance to Marvel’s Thanos. (Bridget Haberecht is absolutely terrific in each of these incarnations.) Like Thanos, Phoenix is zealously committed to a grand mission – the Great Forgetting – which will free society from its obsession with pop culture and facilitate true authenticity.

It’s not as crazy an idea as it sounds: Phoenix makes clear the link between pop culture and capitalism – all the cosplay characters prancing around Supernova are owned by just six major corporations.

Ignoring the capitalism thing for a moment, do we need to be freed from stories?

Indeed, can we be freed from stories?

There are several elements of Treston’s very funny, very clever script that seem to posit liberty from stories as a longed for possibility. Taylor is uncertain about the validity of the whole acting game and dreams of more authentic employment. Thaddeus is in the closet, and crucial to his character development is the dropping of any disguise and the showing to the world his true identity. And the coming together of the young lovers – the emotional heart of the story – appears to necessitate the shedding of any performative behaviour if they are to find the real thing. The last of these is particularly curious. Is romance real? Or is it a social construct, built from all the stories we’ve been told? (I found myself comparing this piece with Stoppard’s The Real Thing, a play which clearly asks whether true love is, after all, just one more performance?)

What is our relationship with stories? Presented here in the most delightfully accessible way, it’s a serious philosophical question.

(Warning! Boring, self-indulgent, reviewer digression ahead! When religious mystics seek a genuine encounter with the divine, they reject or bypass institutional authority, yet still they recount their visions in the tropes of the dominant narrative. Christian mystics see Jesus, Hindu mystics see Krishna. Zen Buddhism bucks this trend, suggesting that in the attaining of enlightenment, all narrative is shed – but, in doing so, it only affirms the fundamental importance of story in everyday life. On a secular level, modern pragmatism also displays an hyper-awareness of narrative. Responding to a society that is more soaked in story than any other in human history, modern pragmatism posits philosophical irony: an acceptance that no grand narrative can be privileged, yet a life without a guiding narrative seems inconceivable. It’s ironic because we know our particular chosen grand narrative can’t be proven true but, in a consciously playful way, we commit to it all the same. Treston’s world of perpetual pop culture references, and of a Supernova forest of competing yet somehow compatible narratives, seems a close cousin to modern pragmatism. But I’ll get back to that forest very soon.)  

Director Eugene Lynch elicits exuberant, high-energy performances from his superb cast. The physicality and the mock fights are especially impressive, combining sound (Daniel Herten), lighting (Topaz Marlay-Cole) and movement (Cassidy McDermott-Smith) with hilarious precision.

So, that fairy tale forest ….. Ultimately, what does the play suggest our relationship with narrative should be?

Does it suggest we should outgrow cosplay? That we should dismiss story and live in something called reality?

All that seems too simplistic a reading, one that denies the characters’ obvious joy in performance, and one that’s blind to the production’s deliciously-sweet and invitingly-rich final image.

Paul Gilchrist

IRL by Lewis Treston

Presented by The Other Theatre in association with bAKEHOUSE Theatre

At KXT until 10 May

kingsxtheatre.com

Image by Justin Cueno

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