Tag Archives: New Theatre

Sh!t Theatre, Or What’s Left Of Us

22 Sep

This is beautifully written and wonderfully performed, very funny and deeply moving.

The title hints at the key theme. 

But we begin with the two writer-performers – Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole – in badger headgear. Think fur, fangs, whiskers, and snouts. Cute.

Apparently, when badgers hit hard times, they get into a torpor. (Yes, it’s a technical thing.) But you can’t remain in a torpor forever.

And I neglected to mention that these badgers begin the show by singing a folk song. Apparently, when human beings hit hard times, they get into folk music. (That’s not a technical thing.) But, as the performers suggest, folk revivals do seem to occur at times of disorder and uncertainty. Like the Industrial Revolution. Like the 60’s. Like Now.

They visit an old folk club. Everyone at the club takes turns singing. It’s not about being good. It’s like those Japanese bowls: when they’re broken, they’re put together again with a lacquer powdered with gold – and become more beautiful because their imperfections are acknowledged. (Those bowls, indeed bowls in general, are mentioned several times, and it’s the sort of thing that makes this such an exceptional piece of writing and performance; what begins as Play grows into Beauty and Truth.)

Many of the songs are about drinking: like The Barley Mow (a cumulative drinking game of a song, with its repeated refrain of Good luck to an increasing number of participants, and ending each time with Good luck to the round bowl.) And there’s the old John Barley Corn (a personification of the grain that becomes beer, and so must die. But He comes back again.)

There’s a lot of songs about death. This is a song about death, we are told repeatedly. (And these songs are performed delightfully.)

We learn the folk club burnt down a week after they visited, and there’s a suggestion the show might become a whodunnit. 

But some questions don’t have answers, and we begin to suspect that the torpor, the chaos, they’ve been speaking about is not especially political.

This is a song about death, we’re told again.

But this time, it isn’t a song. It’s two superbly written, intersecting monologues about personal loss. They’re funny, generous-spirited, courageous and incredibly affecting. They also give an enormous poignancy to so much of what preceded them, so much that earlier in the show seemed only for laughs. The bowls are just one example. Go along and find your own. There’s an extraordinary richness to it all.

Richness and wisdom. The piece is a glorious artistic expression of the most humane of wisdoms: that, if there is a path to salvation, it begins not with the seeking of perfection – in ourselves, in the world –  but with the acknowledgement of all that is broken.

Paul Gilchrist

Sh!t Theatre, Or What’s Left Of Us written and performed by Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole

Presented by Sh!t Theatre in association with Soho Theatre

At New Theatre, as part of the Sydney Fringe (Touring Hub)

Until Sept 27

sydneyfringe.com

Image by Ellie Kurttz

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The Frogs: In Hell They Sing Show Tunes

26 Aug

Adapted by Alex Kendall Robson, after Aristophanes (about twenty-four centuries after Aristophanes.)

Robson’s adaptation follows a very similar plot to the original.

In an attempt to save the world, Dionysius visits the underworld to bring back the greatest playwright. It might seem an odd strategy, but as the God of Theatre, Dionysius might be excused for overestimating the impact of the artform.

The original play, first produced in 405 BCE, was a mixture of satire and broad humour. Robson’s adaptation is similar in tone, though with slightly more focus on the second of these comic elements.

Aristophanes included songs, though not show tunes. (The Ancient Greeks can be blamed for a lot, including theatre and philosophy, but not for the abomination that is modern American musical comedy.)

With amended lyrics, this adaptation of The Frogs includes versions of Putting on the Ritz and Singing in the Rain, as well as Wayfaring Stranger and something (I think?) from Bizet’s Carmen. The last two aren’t show tunes, but then, the manner in which all the musical numbers are presented doesn’t justify the title’s joking implication that songs such as these are the essence of the tortures of Hell. (Nor does their presentation justify my earlier cheap shot at musical comedy.) Under musical director Zachary Aleksander, the talented cast perform the songs beautifully. (Though I wonder whether amplification might have better delivered the wacky, high-spirited energy this production clearly values.)

Working with Robson’s fun script, and under his direction, the comic performances are excellent. I’ll cherry pick a few. Pat Mandziy as Dionysius is a delicious blend of camp and privileged naivety. Eddy O’Leary as his underling, Xanthias, is a fine inheritor of the long tradition that the disempowered see truths to which the powerful are blind. (The script mischievously asks whether we can call this character a slave – but I’ll get back to that later). Axel Berecry as Heracles is gloriously over the top in his presentation of the stupid he-man. Larissa Turton and Meg Bennetts deliver a terrific parody of two tough-speaking old-school landladies. Bennetts also turns up as Sappho, and her portrayal of a character of gravitas, dignity and wisdom is a sensationally effective change in tone from the rest of the production’s madcap hijinks.

I’ve expressed previously that I think it’s odd that Australian theatre makers are fascinated with Ancient Greece. It’s odd because Ancient Greece is truly a foreign culture – yet we seem to see it as a sort of universal. It’s not. Example: Up to 40% of Ancient Greece’s population were slaves – yet, as this production implies, we have trouble even saying the word. And don’t get me started on the misogyny of the ancient world.

Not that audiences will have any trouble following this adaptation. Robson makes this foreign world accessible – a challenging task when you consider that the original play’s dramatis personae consists of a mixture of mythical characters and historical individuals who are hardly household names in modern Australia. Sensibly, when we get to the two historical playwrights who are contending for the title of the greatest – Euripides and Aeschylus – this adaptation slips into a musical number and a quick bawdy sight gag. It’s a smart choice, as contemporary audiences are likely to find a debate concerning the relative merits of the competing styles of Ancient Greek tragedy more soporific than stimulating.

Another change to the original is the addition of Sappho. As I’ve suggested, it’s a scene that makes for fascinating theatre. But curiously, it also functions as a criticism and rejection of Dionysius’ quest. I say curiously because – up to this point – the assertion of theatre’s ultimate value seemed to be the only serious justification for the piece. (If one was needed.)

But the Sappho scene also highlights what I’ve suggested about the Ancient Greeks being a very different culture from our own. And I know I’m close to spoiler territory here – but, when you go, note Sappho’s prayer. Who she prays to is not anachronistic, but what she asks for is. It involves a conception of human relationships which lay centuries ahead, at least in Western culture.   

By now, reading my response, you’ve probably come to the conclusion that it’s not show tunes that are the essence of Hell, but rather nit-picking, such as mine. (The devil being always in the details.)

But, by pointing out an anachronism, I’m not criticising the script. With such a deliberately playful piece that type of petty fault finding would be utterly misguided. (Especially since the piece consciously indulges in it’s fair share of impish anachronism.) And, anyway, I agree with Sappho’s imagined-though-anachronistic solution. I’m merely pointing out that the actual answer the Ancient Greeks would offer to our problems might not satisfy us (…..which is why Robson has rewritten the end of the play.)

Ultimately, this production is an exuberant celebration of love and laughter, and whether that’s a timeless panacea or not, it’s sure as hell welcome now.

Paul Gilchrist

The Frogs: In Hell They Sing Show Tunes adapted by Alex Kendall Robson, after Aristophanes

At New Theatre until 6 September

newtheatre.org.au

Image by Bob Seary

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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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The Flea

11 Feb

This is terrific fun. It’s also a very clever use of both the dramatic and theatrical forms.

Written by James Fritz and first produced in 2023, it’s inspired by the 1889 Cleveland Street scandal, in which it was claimed that gentlemen, high ranking members of British society, were frequenting a male brothel. (The accusation is obviously absurd, akin to suggesting that there are women who engage in homosexual activity.*)

One aristocratic visitor to this house of ill repute was Prince Edward, grandson of Queen Victoria, and second in line to the throne. Or so the scuttlebutt goes, and scuttlebutt it most certainly was – because the men who worked in this brothel were from a much, much, much lower class of society. Telegram boys, apparently, from the General Post Office. As if a gentleman would employ a telegram boy for anything other than the quick delivery of something urgent and rigidly to the point.

So, The Flea is an exploration of class and discrimination. Its title highlights one of the ways we try to avoid acknowledging the impact of these forces. How did these particular men end up working at a brothel, and why did it end for them the way it did? The play’s title implies that it was all just a case of bad luck, an unfortunate chain of causation beginning with an event as random and insignificant as a bite from a tiny insect. But that, of course, is dramatic irony. The play shows us something quite different; it powerfully presents the dreadful machinations of privilege and prejudice.

The Flea is beautifully written, fast paced and very funny, yet with deep emotional impact. It even manages that most difficult of achievements, what is the pinnacle of the dramatic artform: it engages us emotionally with both sides of the conflict. One way it does this is by building on motifs of intimidation; the intimidator in one scene becomes the intimidated in the next. It’s both amusing and disconcerting (like that nightmarish nursery rhyme There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly.)

Director Patrick Kennedy creates an environment of theatrical playfulness while skilfully maintaining the strong narrative drive. His cast is brilliant, delivering great comic performances and embracing the script’s wild doubling. Sofie Divall is magnificent as the Queen and as Emily Swinscow, a no-nonsense working class mother, garnering wonderful laughs from both roles, and drawing tears with the latter. Similarly, Samuel Ireland doubles as the Prince of Wales and Emily’s son Charlie, and he’s delightfully entertaining as the first and heartrendingly poignant as the second. Jack Elliot Mitchell is marvellously versatile, playing Lord Euston, suave aristocratic man about town, in glorious contrast to Hanks, a super conscientious constable. James Collins achieves an equally laudable elasticity, jumping neatly between swaggering working class telegram boy and frightened upper class seeker of illicit love. Mark Salvestro balances portrayals of pimp and policeman, ingeniously highlighting the expected differences and the surprising similarities.  

Kennedy also designs, and all is gorgeously exuberant. The set, with its red and white colour scheme, its subversion of conventional lines and its inversion of traditional curves, evokes John Tenniel’s illustrations for Alice in Wonderland. And that’s appropriate – the production presents as an enchanting madcap cartoon, but it’s also a portrait of a disturbing world, one in which innocence finds no safety.

Paul Gilchrist

The Flea by James Fritz

At New Theatre until March 8, as part of Mardi Gras

newtheatre.org .au

Image by Chris Lundie

* Unlike male homosexual acts, female homosexual acts were not illegal in Britain; it doesn’t seem to have occurred to the establishment that they were possible.

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Stags and Hens

11 Jan

Tomorrow, Linda marries Dave. But tonight is the stags and hens’ parties.

Willy Russell’s play was first produced in 1978 and the action occurs in a dump of a disco in Liverpool in England.

Though it’s nearly fifty years old and set in a foreign country, it’s terrific to see this play on a contemporary Sydney stage. (Though, I must admit, it took a while for my ear to become accustomed to the accents.)

Firstly, it’s very funny. And under the direction of Johann Walraven, the cast commit fully to the comedy. The entire ensemble is brilliantly hilarious.

On the night I saw the show, some members of the audience gasped at some of Russell’s one-liners. Perhaps they thought them politically incorrect? But the awful things some of the characters say, especially the men, are key to Russell’s satire. He’s targeting working class brutality, its fatalism and its seeming inability to tolerate individuality.  

But despite the satire, it’s a sympathetic portrait. There’s a heart-rending sense of missed opportunity, and this is enhanced by the casts’ skill in making the characters likeable, imbuing them with tremendous energy, which has the impact of highlighting how that energy is ultimately either misdirected or thwarted. Chester Lenihan as Robbie, the would-be lady’s man, presents a gloriously funny mix of cockiness and self-doubt. Kirra Jones as Maureen, the drunken cry-baby who just wants a fella, is both very amusing and powerfully poignant.   

And when the play shifts gear, and comedy cozies up to its close-cousin tragedy, the cast are once again up for the script’s demands. Ava McClean as Linda, the bride-to-be, is enormously affecting in her shocked realisation of brutality’s ubiquity. Cameron Sutton as Eddy, the alpha male who lords over his herd but is terrified of change, is a gutsy, confronting portrait of dangerous fragility.

The play is well-named; despite the impending marriage, the focus is not on the personal relationship at the heart of the sacrament, but rather on the dehumanising potential of group dynamics. How do the stags maintain a group identity? How do the hens? And how do the two groups relate?

Maintaining a group identity necessitates policing. Both sexes speak a lot about mateship, but that never seems to go so far as granting each other genuine autonomy or individuality. Instead, there’s an insistence on conformity. It’s a very binary world: you’re either a ‘lad’ or a ‘tart’; you’re either with us or against us. This world of indubitable division is emphasised by the set; scenes mostly happen either in the Gents or in the Ladies.

With our current questioning of binary assumptions, it’s tempting to think we’ve transcended all such narrowness. But, understandably, marginalised people will always seek a greater share of power, and a group identity has long been perceived as one way this might be achieved. In fact, a focus on group identity is presently the height of political fashion and so – by drawing attention to the brutish enforcement that the maintenance of such identities can entail – this production firmly places a troubling, teasing, tickling finger on our societal pulse.

Paul Gilchrist

Stags and Hens by Willy Russell

Presented by Blank Slate Productions

Directed by Johann Walraven

Featuring Grace Easterby, Jonah Elias, Benjamin Itaba, Kirra Jones, Chester Lenihan, Jonathan Serafino, Ellen Peebles, Ava McClean, Cameron Sutton, Hunter Taylor & Madeleine Zinner

At New Theatre until 25 January

newtheatre.org.au/stags-hens/

Image by Robert Catto

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Wife

21 Oct

Written by Samuel Adamson and directed by Darrin Redgate, Wife is boldly structured.

It spans almost an hundred years, but is created from half a dozen twenty minute or so real-time scenes. We start in the late 1950’s, in the dressing room of an English actress (Julia Vosnakis) who’s just played Nora from Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. She’s visited by an intimate friend (Imogen Trevillion) and her boorish husband (Will Manton). We then skip twenty five years to a bar in London, where one of two gay lovers (Henry Lopez Lopez & Manton) is the son of one of the women in the first scene. And then we skip….. you get the idea.

There’s always at least two links between the scenes: someone is related to someone from an earlier scene, and there’s just been a performance of A Doll’s House.

The charm and intrigue of the piece comes from picking out these connections. (Occasionally, some of the cast’s accent work make this more intriguing than necessary.) The script asks a lot from its actors: establish a character quickly but deeply, then let it go and build another. Redgate’s cast are to be congratulated on their commitment to this challenge. A highlight is Imogen Trevillion, informing each of her characters with a truthfulness that both embraces and belies the brevity and bounce of each performative opportunity.  

But back to those links between the scenes. The family connections might hold the piece together, but the ongoing connection to Ibsen’s play is its beating heart.

Nora famously walks out of her marriage because she feels she can’t be an authentic person within an institution constructed from middle-class, patriarchal norms.

Each of the scenes in Wife either explicitly interrogates Nora’s decision or, by presenting tensions that result from power imbalances in intimate relationships, implicitly returns to the issues Ibsen’s heroine encapsulates.

Does this mean Wife asserts the importance or relevance of theatre? Could a piece of theatre effectively do this? You can’t prove a made-up story is relevant by telling another made-up story, not even a cluster of them. You could suggest it, but you could also just produce the original play and allow the audience themselves to determine the relevance.

And, anyway, the relevance of one play proves, or even suggests, very little about all the rest of theatre. It’s probably best to see Wife (as the title implies) as part of the ongoing discussion of the politics of personal relationships (of which Ibsen was a stimulating participant.)

Excitingly, this play applies a queer lens to the perennial discussion. A director (Peter Walters) of one the multiple productions of Ibsen’s play expresses the opinion that marriage and queerness might not be such a good …. marriage. (The Yes outcome of the plebiscite should be celebrated, but that doesn’t mean everyone now has to get hitched. Nora rejected patriarchal and middle-class values because they prohibit authenticity; might not hetero-normative values deserve similar short shrift?)

In every intimate relationship, multiple forces collide. The brute impersonal drive of sex collides with the rich inner emotional lives of the lovers. And these collide with the social expectations of both individuals, knowing as they do that the world always awaits, just on the other side of the bedroom door, eyes ever to the keyhole. And the collision of these cosmically-disparate forces is star-birthingly spectacular. It’s no wonder that mystics of all traditions, in their attempt to express their meeting with the Divine, have fallen back on the language of sexual love.

To the never-to-be-completed conversation about this happiest of collisions, Wife is a fascinating addition.

Paul Gilchrist

Wife by Samuel Adamson

At New Theatre until 2 November

newtheatre.org.au

Image by Bob Seary

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Tom Moran is a Big Fat Filthy Disgusting Liar

25 Sep

Sometimes, when I’m tired or sick or hungry, I worry about silly things – like if I’m liked. And then I remember that some of the people in history I admire the most were burnt at the stake in the public square.

The desire to be liked is pretty universal, and sometimes problematic. When I work with young people, I always try to slip in the same piece of advice: Don’t worry if you’re disliked, because you’ll often be disliked for qualities and actions of which you should be rightfully proud. I’m looked at blankly, or with boredom tinged with disdain – and it becomes apparent that my advice, though unsolicited, is entirely sound.

In Tom Moran is a Big Fat Filthy Disgusting Liar, Moran tells us how so very desperately he has wanted to be liked. So desperate, that the desire has often trumped the truth.

Moran’s delivery is utterly superb, trippingly-on-the-tongue fast and strong … until it’s not, until it slows, until it softens, and with enormous emotional impact he shares moments of shame. The lighting design (Colin Doran) and soundscape (Aoife Kavanagh) beautifully accentuate this journey.

Directed by Davey Kelleher, the show is very funny and incredibly powerful; a brilliant performance by Moran.

If performance is the correct word. Presumably it’s a sharing, not a piece of fiction. (It’s odd how commonly we now do this on stage. Genuine honesty is rare enough in Life; in the theatre, until recently, it was completely unknown.) The whole thing feels a little like being at a support group – except that the guy whose turn it is to speak is absolutely riveting for 70 minutes straight.

The piece is about Moran and his family, and audiences will no doubt respond to the psychological particulars in different ways. Some might feel they’ve been invited to gaze through a portal into a bizarre alternative universe. From others it all might evoke a there-for-the-grace-of-God sort of response. Others still might feel the thrill of recognition, a realisation which can be either comforting or confronting, either assuring them they’re not alone, or challenging them that it can’t go on.

Of my three imagined responses, mine was of the first variety.

But undoubtedly, Moran is exploring one of the fundamental tensions in the human experience: the outside world is filled with people but your inside world is filled with you. How do we reconcile our social needs with the solitary aspect of consciousness? How does anything from that outer world become an unquestioned part of our inner world?

Is the only way out of these thorny dilemmas to focus on loving, rather than being loved?

This piece is fun, thought-provoking and soul-expanding.

Paul Gilchrist

Tom Moran is a Big Fat Filthy Disgusting Liar by Tom Moran

At New Theatre, as part of the Sydney Fringe Touring Hub

Until 28 September

https://sydneyfringe.com/events/tom-moran-is-a-big-fat-filthy-disgusting-liar/

Image by Owen Clarke

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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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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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