Tag Archives: Outhouse Theatre

English

23 Apr

This is a beautiful production of a truly beautiful play.

It’s set in Iran, in a classroom in which English is taught as a foreign language.

The script won Sanaz Toossi the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and by presenting it, and doing so brilliantly under the direction of Craig Baldwin, Outhouse confirms itself as one of our most exciting and stimulating theatre companies.

Marjan insists her students speak only English in class. Pedagogically, this is probably a sensible decision – but it brings to the fore the challenges of learning a new language.

When not attempting English, the characters are imagined to speak in their native Farsi. For the purposes of the play, Farsi is represented by the actors’ natural spoken English, while the language they are attempting to learn is represented by English spoken with an Iranian accent. Dialect coach Linda Nicholls-Gidley deserves congratulations for the cast’s successful navigation of this neat trick. And neat trick it is – because it effectively highlights that behind every accent you might find clumsy, or difficult, or amusing, is a person of equal dignity to you: equally intelligent, equally articulate, equally human.

(Digression: Farsi is what native speakers call their language. For a long time, English speakers called it Persian. There are some Farsi speakers who would prefer that English speakers returned to using the word Persian – because it would make clear to them that the language referred to is a continuation of that used in one of the great literary cultures of the world. Think Hafez, Omar Khayyam, Rumi. In what follows, I’m going to quote Rumi several times, but that’s my pomposity, not the play’s. The play derives its authority not from pretentious claims to erudition, but from the more difficult commitment to honesty, and to the hilarious and oh-so-skilful use of the vernacular.)

By an accident of geopolitics, a fluke of technological disparity, and the evil of man, the majority of the world’s people now speak, as their native tongue, a language they’re told is of secondary value. The play explores this phenomenon with exceptional humour, poignancy and insight.

Eighteen year old Goli hopes English will allow her to reinvent herself, and Minerva Khodabande is splendid in the role, capturing with comic excellence the awkwardness and optimism of youth.

Speak a new language so that the world will be a new world. – Rumi

As the unexpectedly competent English speaker Omid, a charming Pedram Biazar presents the psychological challenges of being caught between two cultures, and the quiet presentation of this oh-so-common predicament fosters the air of truthfulness that pervades the entire production.   

Neveen Hanna as Roya powerfully evokes the ache of grief as a language difference divides her from her son. In one of the play’s many tear-inducing moments, she cries Why couldn’t you have given my granddaughter a name I could pronounce?

All language is a longing for home. – Rumi

Elham muses how different the world might have been if Cyrus the Great’s empire had survived and Farsi, instead of English, had become the lingua franca. Setareh Naghoni’s portrayal of Elham is marvellous: prickly, frustrated, resentful, but courageous in her determination to be loyal to who she is.

Nicole Chamoun as Marjan offers another wonderfully complex portrayal. She presents superbly the character’s pride in her bilingual ability and her commitment to sharing it, but threads through these qualities a strand of self-doubt, thin but thorny.

The scenes between Elham and Marjan are magic, and their gentle but firm refusal to tell us which character is correct is expressive of the sheer dramatic brilliance of this work.

Perhaps it’s through language we become who we are… or become anyone at all.

Or perhaps not. The play says nothing directly about the ineffable, the world beyond what can be spoken. But what work of literature can?

This is how it always is when I finish a poem. A great silence overcomes me and I wonder why I ever thought to use language. – Rumi

And, regarding the play’s conclusion, the spoiler rule also sanctions silence. It must suffice to say that it’s extraordinary. It will be experienced in different ways by different audience members, but it left monolingual me, once again, thinking of Rumi.

Not the ones speaking the same language, but the ones sharing the same feeling understand each other.

And this play is a glorious invitation to empathy.

Paul Gilchrist

English by Sanaz Toossi

presented by Outhouse Theatre Co. & Seymour Centre,

at the Seymour Centre, until 2 May

seymourcentre.com

Image by Richard Farland

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So Young

18 Nov

In writing this review, I’ve allowed the most time to pass I ever have between seeing a show and putting my response on the page.

This is partly because of that pesky thing called Life, which with annoying persistence tries to sideline Art.

But it’s also because – by the time I saw So Young at the Old Fitz – the whole run had sold out. (Though do check for wait lists – tix may become available.)

When responding to theatre I try to write in a way that doesn’t suggest that the producing company has simply outsourced its marketing – but Outhouse’s production of Douglas Maxwell’s play is brilliant.

So Young is the story of forty-something Milo finding love again after the early death of his wife. His longtime friends Davie and Liane are shocked to find this new love, Greta, is only 20 years old.

We live in a culture obsessed with demographic divisions. Each one of us is labelled and firmly put in our box. This superb play is about two of the most dominant of these devilish divisions: youth versus age and male versus female. But it’s also about the only demographic division that ultimately matters: the quick versus the dead.

Under the direction of Sam O’Sullivan, the play blazes with humour and heart.

As Liane, Ainslie McGlynn’s performance is magnificent, beautifully boiling and bubbling with the grief that masquerades as anger.

As Davie, Jeremy Waters gives us a splendid portrait of blokeish bonhomie, with that longing for pleasant peace presented in all its complexity. Is it wisdom? Or is it weakness?

Henry Nixon as Milo offers a bewitching bewilderment in the face of Life’s two greatest mysteries – Death and Love.

Aisha Aidara as Greta is gloriously youthful. She marvellously captures youth’s perceived pitfalls – its social naivety, its careless certainty – while all the time radiating courage.

And courage and its close cousin compassion are the qualities most needed by those of us still on this side of the only division that matters.

Paul Gilchrist

So Young by Douglas Maxwell

Produced by Outhouse Theatre Company

At the Old Fitz until Nov 22

oldfitztheatre.com.au

Image by Richard Farland

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Eureka Day

5 Jun

Set almost entirely in the P&C meetings of a primary school, you might assume this is a fun satire of contemporary society.

And you’d be right. Eureka Day by American writer Jonathan Spector is extraordinarily funny. But it doesn’t just make fun, it confronts one of the biggest rifts in our culture.

Eureka Day Elementary is a school built on social justice and inclusivity: a place where everyone feels seen and heard; a place where decisions are reached by consensus; a place where all points of view are valid.

The last of these is the issue. (And possibly the second last.)

Eureka, of course, means I have found it! – and there’s a sense that’s what the P&C believe: that their place is special, that it encapsulates, somehow, the perfect way forward.

But, for all their good intentions, it doesn’t.

Watching their meetings – bursting with thoughtless condescension, moral pedantry and obsession with policy, yet empty of soul-felt kindness, honest humility and genuine openness – is utterly painful. Yes, it’s hilarious, but it’s also excruciating. Earlier, I called the piece satire, but that genre usually employs hyperbole to make its point. But there’s no exaggeration here; it’s just the reality of our present day.

(A reality that feels like one of the rings of punishment in Dante’s Divine Comedy, one in which we’re condemned to an endless repetition of what seem to be absurdities but are actually perverted echoes of our true sins. However, I do think it’s a ring of Purgatory we’re stuck in, rather than Hell; we are purging ourselves; things will improve; there’s no need to abandon hope.)

There are beautiful moments in the piece where our societal problem is artfully diagnosed. One parent jokes that her daughter was very smart but also good-natured, so they knew she would become a benevolent dictator. Another compliments the work of a mime artist, for his subtlety and, we can only imagine, for his rare ability to just remain silent. Another parent says it straight out: she’s sick of the hubris.

This hubris, the belief that they’ve found the correct way, is tested by an outbreak of mumps at the school. Can all decisions be made by consensus? Are all points of view really valid?

As a society, we’ve fallen in love with policy and forgotten politics. And by politics, I mean the sphere of life in which we have to work with other people (as against just shout at them over and over that they are wrong or evil.) The fact that this play centres on meetings where adults must come together and solve problems makes it essential viewing.

(Though I must admit, I’m a little uncertain about the play’s exploration of vaccination. This hot button issue threatens to overwhelm everything else, burying from common view the representation of the political sphere that I so value. But, yes, I know, I know, the dramatic form must deal in the concrete…)

Directed by Craig Baldwin, the production bubbles away at just the right pace, evoking the awful enervating reality we currently endure, yet still assuring us the dramatic boil-over is imminent.

Performances are excellent.

Jamie Oxenbould as Don, a school official, is perfectly, perpetually, and pathetically polite and patient.

Katrina Retallick as Suzanne is both wonderfully comic and deeply poignant, offering a rich portrait of an individual traumatised by the universe’s chaotic cruelty and who overcompensates with a commitment to control.

Christian Charisiou’s Eli is brilliant as the epitome of overtalking privilege, the misguided good that knows not when to stop.

Branden Christine as the newcomer to the school community is magnificent, presenting a fascinating study in intelligence encountering its nemesis: the holding back, the bitten tongue, the seductive whisperings of despair as we wait to speak the Truth.

Deborah An as May has a gloriously warm energy. Her character’s journey is perhaps the biggest of the play, and she pitches it superbly. Her speech in which she posits what she wants for her kids is a highlight, and represents the best of what the play has to offer: the petty hobgoblin of certainty dispelled by a courageous vision of hope.

With this production, Outhouse Theatre shows once again why they are a vital part of the Sydney scene, presenting work that dares to walk our societal fault lines, and keeps its balance with honesty and humour.

Paul Gilchrist

Eureka Day by Jonathan Spector

Presented by Seymour Centre & Outhouse Theatre Co

At Seymour Centre until 21 June

seymourcentre.com

Image by Richard Farland

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A Case for the Existence of God

2 May

This is a magnificent piece of theatre.

However, I suspect the title might put off an Australian audience.

Australians like to believe we’re less literal than our American cousins. Case in point: we often joke that they don’t get irony. But, ironically, when it comes to religious language, we’re the ones reluctant to use it in any way other than literally. In many other cultures, writers comfortably evoke God without fear that it automatically commits them to the theological tenets of some religion. Religious language is employed to suggest or symbolise the grand, the awe inspiring, the universal. Sometimes, it can feel like the only discourse big enough for these things. An honorary American, Albert Einstein, was famous for using religious language in this way. His oft quoted comment, expressing his objection to quantum theory, that God does not play dice, was simply an assertion that mere chance could not be fundamental to the fabric of the universe. He was saying nothing that we unsophisticated Australians would interpret as religious.

The title of Samuel D. Hunter’s play uses religious language in a similarly evocative way. In this superbly crafted two hander, no one says a word about religion. Not a word. The two male characters discuss money, work and most of all, their children. They build an unlikely friendship. The title simply implies hope, that despite problems, things might work out OK. (I know I’m getting awfully close to spoiler territory here, but the final scene, which is a theatrical surprise and an utter delight, reminds me of the conclusion of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, only more secular. Wilder himself borrowed the idea from Dante, that towering poet who spoke of the human heart via religious language – because only it had the grandeur to do justice to his topic.)

Director Craig Baldwin’s production is wisely pared back so that the focus is on the two splendid performances by Elijah Williams and Anthony Gooley.

Keith is an educated musicologist, working as a mortgage broker. As a single gay man, his dream of adoption is proving difficult, so he fosters a new born in the hope that the relationship might be allowed to become more permanent. Surviving a divorce, working class Ryan seeks a mortgage to help give his baby daughter a real home. Out of a similar sadness, the friendship between the men grows.

Williams’ Keith is brilliant: prickly, vulnerable, articulate and lightning fast. Gooley’s Ryan is marvellous: slow, awkward and inarticulate. Both characters are beautifully generous-hearted. It was pure pleasure to spend ninety minutes in their company.  

A case for the existence of God? Amongst other things, it’s their friendship that suggests the possibility. (See above. God is love is not marketing hyperbole; it will reward deep reflection in a way that Coke is It cannot.)

In a play jam-packed with scorchingly truthful moments, one of my favourites is when the two men, sharing a bottle of scotch, begin to discuss the history of Western music (as you do.) Keith mentions the invention of polyphony, a term which is, of course, meaningless to Ryan. And then the penny drops: harmony! Ryan can’t believe there was a time before harmony. The symbolism is not overplayed, the scene does what drama excels at: concrete moments played so honestly they intimate something universal.

Paul Gilchrist

A Case for the Existence of God by Samuel D. Hunter

At Seymour Centre until 4 May

www.seymourcentre.com/event/a-case-for-the-existence-of-god/

Image by Phil Erbacher

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