Drink Rum with Expats

24 Sep

This is classic fringe theatre.

Sh!t theatre (creators and performers Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole) tell us how they got a gig to develop a piece of theatre in Malta. It’s to be presented at The Pub, a favourite haunt of British expats. (My choice of noun is deliberate; not expats, haunt; it’s the bar where Oliver Reed died. Not that the great actor has a continuing spectral presence; it’s just that, apparently, the venue milks the unfortunate incident for all it’s worth.)

Drink Rum with Expats is an intentionally playful, laidback telling. It’s constructed of bits and pieces: songs and sing-alongs (mainly drinking songs); slide shows and videos (caricatures of expats, screen shots of the daggy local media, snaps and reels revealing the beauty of the island); flash language lessons (fundamentals, like how to say penis in Maltese); free beer and rum (no joke); crowd surfing – and dancing (at least, impressions of Oliver Reed dancing).

Think of it as a trash and treasure stall, where in the ragged wildness of detritus true gold lies hidden. Or think of it as a mosaic, where the impressive, the inspiring, is made from many unlikely little parts. You could call it the theatrical equivalent of scrap-booking, except it’s terrific fun.

But what begins as a collection of cheeky anecdotes from a sun and booze holiday grows into a story of political awareness.

Ultimately, the show explores corruption and the plight of refugees. Expats party in Malta while those who manage to make it by raft from Libya are held in detention centres. But, at a more insidious level, we hear of the selling of European passports and the assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia who dared to challenge the practice. We see a deeply moving video of a protest attended by the performers, a candle lit vigil demanding truth and justice. (Convictions have since been made.)

The straightforward, overtly political approach works because the performers present as easy-going and fun-loving. What they say about the issues becomes indubitable – simple common sense. If only the world were cakes and ale. Alas, it’s not.

However, the show is a splendid example of theatrical exuberance, an invaluable reminder, that in the confrontation with the dark and dirty, the torch of truth might best be wielded by joy.

Paul Gilchrist

Drink Rum with Expats by Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole

at New Theatre, as part of The Sydney Fringe Touring Hub

until 28 Sept

https://sydneyfringe.com/events/drink-rum-with-expats/

Image supplied by Sh!t Theatre

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Plenty of Fish in the Sea

23 Sep

Firstly, this is top-class physical theatre.

Created and directed by Emily Ayoub and Madeline Baghurst, and performed by these two artists and Christopher Carroll, Plenty of Fish in the Sea is a visual wonder.

The choreographed movement is extraordinary, and the individual clowning a treat – replete with hilarious visual gags and moments of playful poignancy.

Tobhiyah Stone Feller’s design is both beautiful and inventive and, mounted all on wheels, it dances with the performers. The soundscape with composition by Daniel Herten is enchanting and fun, and the performers’ interaction with it is superb. Victor Kalka’s lighting design is a gorgeous game of light and shadow, creating a magical aura that invites us into the play’s fabulous world.

Which brings me to Secondly: What is it all about?

On the surface, a French speaking nun (Je ne pourrais pas) and her silent novitiate go fishing and catch – with a hook – a man. They then want to teach him to fish. He learns. They catch a huge amount of fish. He says too many. And I’ll leave it there.

Except for the sex. I really should mention the sex.

Fables don’t usually have sex (which is probably why they’re of little interest to most people.) I guess the piece is a fable about excess, in particular sexual excess; a sort of allegorical presentation of the endless opportunities offered in our society for hooking up, and the way that can lead to hyper-sexualisation (which may, or may not, be a good thing.)

You can probably sense a little doubt. I’m uncertain about the meaning of the piece for two reasons. One reason is the work’s potential for sensory overload, which (for me, at least) results in semantic overload. In addition to the extraordinary visuals and soundscape, there’s also spoken word. A recorded voice over reads from a book the women have given the man. The book appears to be some treasured text about fishing, but it’s salted with symbolism and mischievous hints of higher meaning (or perhaps lower meaning; see earlier comments about sex.) I found the VO difficult to follow; I’m not sure if that was because of a technical thing or an accent thing. There’s also a lot of talk from the French speaking nun which, va sans dire que, I didn’t understand. The only spoken word accessible to me was the dialogue of the male character, and I felt positioned a little like him – bewildered, charmed, and ultimately fucked over (in the nicest possible way.)

The second reason I’m uncertain about the meaning is that I’m not sure the piece really does operate as a fable or an allegory.

Perhaps, instead, it does what abstract art can do: that is, present a mood that resists or escapes linguistic statement. (Picasso, or somebody, said something about not wanting to paint what trees look like, but rather how they make you feel.)  

Or, perhaps, the piece functions as a sort of Zen koan; a teasingly deliberate denial of certainty; a cheeky refusal to flatten into a dull, explicit meaning; a type of tricksy epistemological illusion that offers intimations of spiritual liberation.

Whatever the case, seek depth, if you want – but know for sure this work delivers true delight.

Paul Gilchrist

Plenty of Fish in the Sea by Emily Ayoub and Madeline Baghurst

Played at New Theatre, as part of the Sydney Fringe,

17 -21 September

Image by Geoff Magee

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Colder than Here

21 Sep

Go gentle into that good night….(with apologies to Dylan Thomas.)

In Laura Wade’s play, Myra is dying of cancer. She has six months to live.

Her husband and two adult daughters struggle to deal with this. (Myra seemingly less so.)

Told with gentle humour, it’s an unusual story to put on stage – because it’s so very, very common an experience. That almost seems the point of the piece, the mundanity of it all.

Apart from being kept busy dying, Myra seems most interested in where she will be buried and what will be painted on her coffin. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it’s a coping mechanism, but the script offers so little about Myra that it’s difficult to tell. This British play is definitely set in a post-Christian world: there’s no judgement or evaluation of what Myra’s life has been worth, and no thought of an afterlife. Her death, like her life, is part of no grand soul-lifting (or even crushing) narrative.

In some ways, Colder than Here reminds me of Margaret Edson’s W;t, but without that play’s references to John Donne’s religious poetry which make apparent the relative spiritual poverty of modern secular materialism. Perhaps in this play, in which a richer worldview is never even alluded to, the pathos is more powerful.

Or perhaps we’re being offered comfort. Perhaps we’re being reminded, that after all, none of it matters that much. Perhaps it’s the equivalent of standing in a century old graveyard and finding peace in the knowledge that in an hundred years’ time no one will mourn you, that you will be forgotten, as all are forgotten.

Not that Myra’s family isn’t troubled by her impending death. In fact, the play’s focus does seem mostly on the family members who will survive her – on her Death as against her Dying. (Dying being what the sick person does, it’s only those who remain who experience Death.)

But the family are a rather hapless bunch; they clearly love Myra, but their responses are a mixture of bewilderment, confusion and self-concern. Before the giant Death, they are little people. The confrontation forces them to grow, but not very much. Nor is there a Life-affirming defiance in the face of the Great Inevitability, there’s no sense that though “we cannot make our sun stand still, yet we will make him run” (with no apologies to Andrew Marvell.) If Death can’t provoke from us Poetry, or at least Rhetoric, you got to wonder what Death is for.

Director Janine Watson elicits fine performances from the cast, each actor successfully finding the balance between humour and fragility. Hannah Waterman as Myra begins with an almost cheeky sense of fun, that might be part acceptance part denial, but gradually textures this with the increasing irritability of a person in genuine pain. Huw Higginson as her husband perfectly delivers the one-liner-wit that is clearly key to the couple’s ongoing attraction, but also movingly presents a man emotionally frozen, overwhelmed by the demands of the moment – a deepening cold that holds no promise of future warmth. Charlotte Friels as Myra’s eldest daughter offers a poignant portrait of a woman responsible and mature, but one imperceptibly and frighteningly losing her sense of centre. As younger sister Jenna, Airlie Dodds gives us perhaps the most fascinating journey of the characters, unexpectedly charming in her initial clumsy self-centredness before growing to a greater awareness of others, but one still subtly tinged with the personal absorption which is the hallmark of current perceptions of what it is to be human.   

This is a simple piece, a small piece, but in these qualities an honest one, both a powerful encouragement to acceptance and a surreptitious challenge to the pettiness of our vision of Life.

Paul Gilchrist

Colder Than Here by Laura Wade

At Ensemble until 12 Oct

www.ensemble.com.au/shows/colder-than-here/

Image by Phil Erbacher

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Vickie & Vinnie

18 Sep

They’re filming the pilot of the TV sitcom Vickie & Vinnie and we’re the studio audience.

I pray the show never gets the green light to be developed into a full series; it’s truly awful. And that’s one of the comic delights of Amy Lawler’s play – it delivers a terrific parody of a genre that too often deals in cliché and untruth.

In the pilot, the titular and platonic housemates are surprised by a visit from Vickie’s mum. (No-one living on the planet on which television was invented over 70 years ago would be surprised by that plotline.) Incomprehensibly, Vickie’s mum is outraged that her adult daughter is sharing a house with a man. Even more incomprehensibly, to placate her, the housemates pretend to be engaged. If you were pitching the idea to a producer, you might say it features a group of creatures who look human but who share with that species only the qualities of deceit and mean-spiritedness. These creatures spend a lot of time insulting each other – and this is the interesting bit – they do it while sitting on a couch.

Yes, television like this gets made.  

And people watch it.

(It’s probably best not to think too much about what that says about human nature.)

But Lawler digs deeper by presenting the world in which such rubbish is created. Alexis has been cast as Vickie. It’s her first big chance in the industry – but it’s not going to be easy: the director is abusive; the first AD is obsessed with an unrealistic schedule; her co-star is unsympathetic and impatient; and the actor playing her mother, a TV legend, is a total diva. Like all good satire, it feels like there’s only a sprinkle of hyperbole.

The conceit that we are the studio audience, and that we’re expected to respond to cue lights demanding Laughter and Applause is great fun, and effectively encapsulates the superficiality of sitcoms. (The conceit, however, does come with a cost: the piece is forced into a similitude of real time; location becomes frozen into a type of static realism; and, when there are conversations that would presumably be private, our presence as studio audience is conveniently forgotten.)  

Directed by Lawler, performances are wonderfully comic. Theo Rule as the TV director is gloriously shallow and inconsiderate. Linda Nicholls-Gidley as the diva is tremendous fun; imperious and hilariously self-important. Nicholas Richard as the first AD does awkward with elegant acumen. Nikita Khromykh as the actor playing Vinnie slips smoothly between the uptight smart alec of his TV character and the cynical professional whose talents are being wasted – while simultaneously offering sufficient hints that he might just be human after all. Milli Higgins as the gopher delivers some magical physical comedy. Claudia Elbourne as Alexis beautifully balances the humour of the parody and satire with a naturalism of genuine confusion and hurt that gives the piece its emotional punch.

The program suggests Alexis is neurodiverse. I wouldn’t have picked this up from the production; the character simply appears to be what used to be called a sane, good person – she just happens to be stuck in an utterly barking mad environment. Semantically, the term neurodiverse implies the existence of a common or typical experience. (Does the term imply there’s a normal? No, but I’ll get back to that weaselly little word.) Clearly, there are individuals who experience life differently than many others do, and often their experience is more challenging. And, if the writer director and some of the creative team of this piece say they’re sharing their experience then that can only be a good thing, one that shines light on some otherwise neglected aspects of what it is to be alive. However, the program note suggesting the play represents the experience of a neurodiverse individual still has me wondering if it’s one last cheeky piece of satire – not aimed at those who are neurodiverse, or even aimed at the term itself, but rather at the TV industry, where barbaric behaviour might be so common, that some might say it’s just normal, and if you can’t cope with it, then you’re the one with the problem.

Which is, of course, a most insidious way of silencing criticism.

Vickie & Vinnie by Amy Lawler

at 107 Projects until 21 Sept

as part of the Sydney Fringe

sydneyfringe.com/events/vickie-vinnie/

Image by Holly-Mae Steen Price

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AUTO-TUNE

5 Sep

This is a brilliantly inventive, totally engaging piece of theatre, written by Mark Rogers and directed by Solomon Thomas.

It’s a rock opera. Sort of. Unlike most operas, the fourth wall has fallen. But it does have surtitles – with some terrifically funny graphics.

Ostensibly, it’s the story of a love triangle between young friends Michael (Rogers), Brooke (Ashley Bundang) and Andy (Liam ‘Snowy’ Halliwell), and the consequences when Michael makes a dreadful mistake.

It’s about the desire to correct errors, to smooth the rough. Hence the title.

Michael has a portal. He uses it to go back a moment or two in time to fix things. I don’t think we’re being asked to take this idea seriously.  (Though the song that introduces the conceit is absolute gold.) The portal operates as metaphor for our wish to perfect our lives.

We’re told that “In opera, it’s easy to get lost in the story.”

Which I doubt.

What’s being flagged is that the piece itself is about storytelling.

Michael tells a story about several performances he’s given. A story about stories, if you will. (Perhaps it’s also an exploration of narrative therapy, of how we’ll tell ourselves a story  …. about ourselves …. in order to lull pain, to quiet conscience, to silence Truth.)

And the chosen form draws further attention to storytelling. Songs – very cool and lyrically exciting ones – are performed with tremendous energy and exuberance by Rogers, Bundang and Halliwell. Yes, performed. What I mean is that the usual conceit of operas and musicals (that people just sing) is abandoned. The conceit is it’s a concert, and we are the audience. (Yes, I know we’re always the audience, but there are audiences and there are audiences.)

Also pulling us out of any representational realism is nostalgia. By reminding us of the blind obsessions and ferocious loyalties of pop culture, we’re invited to gently laugh at our youthful selves. Similarly, the love triangle narrative is set in regional NSW. The Wagga Wave might only come through at 5, but it will come through at 5 forever.

Though gloriously intellectually playful, the piece has also got real emotional impact. It’s like being invited to a crack-fuelled dinner party with Socrates, but with the chance of being speared in the stomach by a Spartan hoplite (which is a pull-out quote I expect to see splattered all over social media, and on the side of buses when the show gets the international tour it deserves.) 

I admit, the piece makes no actual reference to ancient Greek philosophy. Instead it spends stage time on more topical issues, like the value of hip-hop (a riff which includes one of the funniest lines I’ve heard in contemporary Aus theatre.)

I could finish with Plato. Auto-tune, our desire to tame wildness, does evoke the Cave and the shadows we watch, while all reality lies behind us, unruly but unnoticed. (Yes, I know, I’ve flipped Plato; he seems to have thought we really should be paying attention to the auto-tune.)

So I’ll finish with Mark Rogers. Performer, composer, writer – it’s an absolutely extraordinary achievement.

Paul Gilchrist

AUTO-TUNE by Mark Rogers

currently playing at the Sydney Opera House until 7 September 2024, as part of UnWrapped

www.sydneyoperahouse.com/theatre/unwrapped-auto-tune

Image by Ravyna Jassani

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Love and Faith (and something unholy)

31 Aug

There’s some thrilling creative decisions being made here.

Director and adaptor Lucy Boon abbreviates two Elizabethan texts, and then both juxtaposes and links them.

John Lyly’s Galatea tells of two maidens who escape into the forest dressed as men, hoping to avoid becoming sacrificial tributes to the god of the sea, Neptune. While disguised they meet, and the attraction is instant – and bewildering, and exhilarating. Meanwhile, in the same forest, is the god of chastity, Diana. When her entourage is surprised by Cupid, mayhem ensures. The adaptation is taut and terrific.

Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure tells of Isabella, tasked with saving her sibling from execution. The twist is that Lord Angelo has condemned the supposed criminal for fornication, the very act he now demands of Isabella if her sibling is to escape death. It’s a classic exploration of hypocrisy and, once again, the adaptation is excellent. The beautiful sting in the tale is that Boon cleverly alters Shakespeare’s overly neat and problematic denouement to express the pathos-inducing injustice of silenced voices, both female and lesbian.

The performance style is what I’ve previously termed the Theatre of Audacity. By this, I mean it appears that the audience is being invited to respond with a loud I can’t believe you’re actually doing that in front of me! Performances are fun and high energy. With the support of movement director Miriam Slater, the physical comedy is especially good, with highlights being Clay Crighton as Cupid, Jemima Hartley as the mischievous godling’s victim, and Cara Whitehouse as Venus and the Duke of Vienna. At times, the cast are challenged by Lyly’s language (though that probably helps explain why we still valorise Shakespeare but have pretty much forgotten the earlier playwright. Of course, Lyly’s interest in classical gods rather than real people might play a part in that, too.)

One aspect of the Theatre of Audacity that’s particularly fascinating is that it doesn’t demand perfection. (In fact, if you are flawless, your performance wouldn’t actually be audacious.) This aesthetic is reflected in the decision to have the cast both dance and lip-sync to recorded pop songs. (Drag in general shares this approach, declaring that Who I am is derived from already existing tropes, but I’m claiming it, and so, by sheer exuberance, it boldly stakes out an individual identity, but one still secure within a community.)

Theatre of Audacity’s seeming opposite is Theatre of Authenticity, but they’re not mutually exclusive. Isabella, played with both charisma and vulnerability by Aisling Delahunt, must navigate her conflicting loyalties – but she also radically seeks her own fulfillment. And, by ultimately connecting the two Elizabethan works, this piece offers a stunning resolution, one that’s a clear assertion of the authenticity of identities and of desires that transcend any stifling, small, supposed normalcy.

Paul Gilchrist

Love and Faith (and something unholy) adapted by Lucy Boon from Lyly and Shakespeare

presented by Acoustic Theatre Troupe

at the Substation (Qtopia) until Aug 31

qtopiasydney.com.au

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The Department of Family Values

26 Aug

Written by Jon Glass and directed by Garreth Cruikshank, this is an enjoyable social satire.

Set in contemporary Australia, it interrogates the relationships within a privileged family.

Rebecca (Alexandra O’Brien) is a corporate lawyer and her husband Oliver (Barret Griffin) is a writer who suffers from the luxury of writer’s block. Their daughter Chloe (Rhiannon Jean) has won a place at Oxford, studying Comparative Literature.

Of these familial relationships, only that between father and daughter appears amiable.

Several factors add to the tension. Chloe has hooked up with a new guy, Josh (Angus Farrand) and as boyfriends go, it would probably be better if he did. Simultaneously supporting the family and having their own expectations are longtime friends Mark (Cruikshank) and his terminally ill partner Anne (Sally Williams).

For the most part, the characters are selfish and/or stupid, and so are alternatively amusing or pathos-inducing. There are some terrific one liners, but I was uncertain whether I was watching a comedy or a drama – a result of both the writing and the performance choices. At times too slow for comedy and at others too hyperbolic for drama, the work exists in a disturbing liminal space, one wonderfully appropriate for eliciting discomfort in an audience whose world is possibly not too dissimilar from that of the characters. (Adherence to the conventions of genre is one way we guide our audience through a production, but a single-minded insistence on these conventions is also how we attempt to tame the revitalising wildness of the theatrical experience.)

The final scene tries to do too much: too quickly solving dilemmas which were, admittedly, never sufficiently fleshed out. However, in its emphasis on reconciliation, the piece takes part in the grand tradition of comedy, while also challenging us to find room in our reality for this golden but oft forgotten value.  

Paul Gilchrist

The Department of Family Values by Jon Glass

The Greek Theatre

21st to 24 Aug (This run has been completed)

Image by Garreth Cruikshank

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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

25 Aug

This is a big, bold adventure in theatre making.

Several years ago, when I heard that the novel had been turned into a play, my first response was How? (Though that was very closely followed by a Why?)

The most distinctive feature of the famous novel by Mark Haddon is that it’s narrated by a neurodivergent teenager.

Apart from one-character shows, drama really doesn’t do the whole first-person thing. Its glory is that it’s multi-voiced.

Simon Stephens’ stage adaptation tries to keep central Christopher’s voice, but not surprisingly, a play that’s 2 hours 40 minutes long (including interval) looks for ways to create texture.

One way is by giving some of Christopher’s narration to his mentor Siobhan, who reads from his notebooks. In fact, Siobhan (played by Brigid Zengeni with a stage presence that is noble, authoritative and warm) becomes almost a semi-divine figure, a type of guardian angel, making us feel no real harm can come to our hero. These decisions downplay Christopher’s isolation, but deliberately make the piece safe and inviting (which, perhaps, only devotees of the Theatre of Cruelty will regret.)

Another way of texturing a predominantly first-person narration is to privilege the dialogue from the novel at the expense of its more discursive elements. However, one of the charms of the book is that Christopher often records other character’s words without understanding their subtext. The reader gets what his father means, but Christopher does not. Of course, you can do this in drama, but, ironically, it ceases to be dramatic irony; it becomes just misunderstanding. Perhaps this creative decision is a more humane, egalitarian-spirited response to Christopher’s situation, but it does mean the dialogue functions differently than it does in the novel, and that it does not especially underline Christopher’s isolation, or what might be distinctive about his experience as a neurodivergent individual.

(Should it? I suspect this play, this production, will be valued as a representation of a marginalised group – or dissed as an inaccurate one. It’s odd how we’ve come to read fiction in this way. If you wanted to tell the truth about an entire demographic group, why would you choose a form that by its very nature focuses on the individual, the particular, the specific? Invariably, you’ll elicit dissatisfaction when another individual, particular, specific characteristic is not represented. Though, admittedly, most of the audience are in no position to judge the veracity of your representation anyway; they’re positioned to passively accept it.)

Another way of granting texture to a work originating in first-person is movement. On multiple occasions, the cast mirror Christopher’s movements, and this is cute, fun and well executed – though it raises the spectre of bad faith in the script. It feels as though gaps are being filled, ones that another production might have filled (possibly no more satisfyingly) with high tech.

Speaking of tech, above the stage is a device which displays words, warnings, and the time. In the novel, Christopher often tells us exactly when things happen. He makes statements like At 4.02 pm father did X. But the device I’ve mentioned means Christopher doesn’t tell us the precise time, we know it – but, of course, we don’t need to know it, except in so far as this hyperbolic precision tells us something about Christopher. Similarly, the protagonist’s love of mathematics is presented as a very Belvoir dance number, a delightful high energy parody, but one perhaps hinting more at the assumptions being made about the audience than about Christopher’s passion and skill. (Though see my earlier comments about representation.)

Christopher himself expresses uncertainty whether his experience can be turned into a play. (If dramatic irony is when the audience knows more than the characters, what do you call it when characters know more than their creators?)

But does it matter if the play reflects the novel? Or if it accurately represents a lived experience?

Apart from these things, what does the play, the production, do?

Under the direction of Hannah Goodwin, we’re given some wonderful performances. Matilda Ridgway as Christopher’s late mother, a simple woman who struggles with the complexity of raising her son, beautifully balances vibrancy and vulnerability. Daniel R. Nixon as Christopher has a gargantuan role, and he presents it brilliantly, eliciting both pathos and humour, while embodying an inspiring individual dignity.

It’s a deeply human story told with fun and feeling.

Paul Gilchrist

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, based on the novel by Mark Haddon & adapted for the stage by Simon Stephens.

Belvoir until 22 September

belvoir.com.au

Image by Brett Boardman

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Hangmen

19 Aug

I don’t believe in theatre awards. (Not that they exist, but that they have much validity.)

But Hangmen by Martin McDonagh won the 2016 Olivier Award for Best New Play, and it’s certainly an extraordinarily well-crafted comedy.

Set in 1960’s northern England, it purportedly features the last hangmen employed by the British Crown. But capital punishment has just been abolished, and at least one of these men feels that now is the time to bask in a little celebrity.

But fame is a lure that attracts some truly strange fish.

Directed by Deborah Mulhall, this is a terrific production. The entire cast do brilliant comic work. (A few highlights: Nathan Farrow as the bragging, bullying publican and ex-executioner is point perfect. Sonya Kerr, as his wife, beautifully balances the no-nonsense strength of a woman who runs a pub with the vulnerability of a mother only too aware of the dangers faced by her daughter in a brutal, male-centric world. Kim Clifton as that daughter is excellent, offering a marvellous portrait of that quintessentially teenage mix of awkwardness, defiance, naivety and wonder. Robert Snars as the stranger who appears at the pub is superbly menacing.)  

Hangmen is a black comedy, and black comedy is a very particular taste. (Not particularly mine.)

How can we laugh at violence?

There is most certainly a strand of spiky satire, a mocking of the inadequacy of those whose administer justice, and a poking at pretension, egoism and heartlessness.

But it’s the last of these – the attack on heartlessness – that undermines black comedy for me. It’s as though we’re being invited to respond to the heartlessness of violence with …. heartlessness. It can feel a little like the pot calling the kettle black (or, at least, somewhat grimy.)

And this show demands a pitiless physicality. Horrific violence reportedly happens offstage, but we must also witness horrendously violent acts onstage. Frustratingly, the spoiler rule reduces me to a nebulous imprecision – but let me say that an act is represented that more sensitive souls may not wish to see, let alone be inclined to giggle at. (But more on this latter.)

Comic violence is extraordinarily difficult: how much do we want the audience to believe it? If the representation fails to achieve verisimilitude, our attention is drawn to this seeming defect. But, if the representation does appear realistic, it’s unlikely to be funny. (Again, more on this later.)

And adding to the challenge of representing such violence on stage is the spell-breaking fear that the stunt may go dreadfully wrong. Safety procedures mean that it won’t – but, as you hastily make that assessment, you’re dragged out of the world of the play.

But back to my annoying More on this later refrain.

Despite my doubts about black comedy, I know the genre is deliberately edgy. It’s meant to make us feel uncomfortable. And discomfort can be soul-expanding, and in our lives of privileged complacency and self-righteous moral certainty, a little expansion wouldn’t do any harm.

Perhaps our laughter at black comedy is just how we hide from a horrible truth. Perhaps it’s merely our way of refusing to acknowledge seriously that a temptation to violence dwells in the human breast.

Or, perhaps our laughter at black comedy can surprise us. Perhaps it can be a delightfully disarming revelation that we too share in humanity’s darker tendencies.

And, if it helps us realise that we’re in this grand mess together, then it’s a good thing.

Paul Gilchrist

Hangmen by Martin McDonagh

until 14 Sept at New Theatre

newtheatre.org.au

Image by Bob Seary

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The Cherry Orchard

15 Aug

This is not the one by Chekhov. Though it is, sort of. Gary Owen has taken the bones of the story and buried them in Thatcher’s Britain.

It’s odd (though enjoyable) that we’ll put on a century old Russian play in contemporary Sydney. And the odd (though enjoyable) dial is ramped up further when we put on a British adaptation of an old Russian play. (And even more so when you consider that this particular adaptation is actually a historical drama, set forty years earlier than the time it was written. And then add the fact that this is the second modern British play informed by Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard presented by this particular producing company in the last two years.)

It’s mirror reflecting on mirror, endlessly fascinating.

As I suggested, the bones of the story are the same: a privileged family in the process of disintegration. With the matriarchy asleep at the wheel, will they get to keep their estate?

Owen’s version keeps the pre-story of the death of the matriarch’s son, but soaks her grief in alcohol. The result is that the play seems smaller than Chekhov’s, haunted by a dead child and highlighting substance abuse. The sense of social change enervating an entire class is weakened, though perhaps it’s my historical ignorance that makes it difficult to find connections between Thatcher’s anti-working class revolution and the malaise of the landed gentry in fin de siècle Russia.

Under the direction of Anthony Skuse, performances are marvellous. Deborah Galanos as Rainey the matriarch has a tough job – the script rarely has her without a drink in hand – but she beautifully balances bullying charisma and vulnerability. Jane Angharad as her adopted daughter, struggling to keep her home and navigating a precarious romantic relationship, is deeply moving. Charles Mayer as Rainey’s twitty brother is great fun. James Smithers as the young would-be-radical is excellent, combining a boasting bravado with the ominous sense he might sell out. He’s having a fling (or is it?) with Rainey’s daughter, played with a glorious vibrant intelligence by Amelia Parsonson, and their scenes together are electric.

Paul Gilchrist

The Cherry Orchard by Gary Owen

At the Old Fitz until Aug 24

oldfitztheatre.com.au

Image by Braiden Toko

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