Reviews are utterly subjective, but I like to maintain the illusion that what I write has some value. One way I do this is by never mentioning myself. I do this in the hope that my voice – that of a specific but unexceptional human being – will be confused with some sort of disembodied, indubitable, God-like authority. Most people seem willing to go along with the charade. After all, they suspend disbelief while in the theatre; how hard can it be to continue that childlike habit when reading the reviews afterwards?
But in this review (or, at least, before this review) I will write about myself.
In this production, dog by Shayne, two characters struggle with mental health issues. One suffers from alcoholism. The other suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
I have suffered from OCD for forty years. One might expect my personal response to dog to be one of two types: frustration that the condition I struggle with is not represented in the way I’ve experienced it OR relief that the condition is being represented at all.
But my response is neither. I’m not especially interested in the idea that art is valuable because it represents aspects of the human condition. Those aspects of Life exist regardless of whether we represent them. The need to have them represented seems oddly secondary to the business of living.
Many people will disagree with me. Some of those people will be artists – because we’ve come to see the justification for creating art as the giving of voice to marginalised peoples and their experiences. Other people who disagree with me will assert that art, like abstract thinking, is how we make sense of Life, how we hold it apart from ourselves, at arm’s length, to turn it around in the light, to have a good look at it.
But we also represent aspects of Life in an attempt to control them. And, having suffered OCD for 40 years, I know a little about the temptation to control. (I can’t emphasise enough that I’m making absolutely no comment about what may have motivated the writer of this piece of theatre.)
And here ends talk of me.
Now my review – sorry, the review – of dog by Shayne.
The script is beautifully spare; honest, brave and true.
Kim Hardwick’s direction gives space. Nothing is hurried. The world spins faster than it does in reality (it always does in drama) but here the pace is such that nothing feels artificially concentrated.
The performances are excellent. Jack Patten’s laconic working class Aussie male is pitch perfect, and the slow soak of his alcoholism is both frightening and mesmerising. Laneikka Denne’s victim of OCD has no such gradualism: their performance begins with a representation of the condition that is powerfully pathos inducing, and is then beautifully balanced with scenes in which the character’s deep and full humanity is allowed to gloriously shine.
The titular character is less convincing. But … that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Representations can fail in their portrayal of reality but succeed in something more important: the invitation, the reminder, to exercise imagination and agency.
For that way hope lies.
Paul Gilchrist
dog by Shayne
at KXT on Broadway until 8 June
Image by Clare Hawley
Theatre Red 