West East Theatre
10 May 2009
fortyfive downstairs
An American, an Irishman and an Englishman walk into Beirut and find themselves locked in cell together for four and a half years.
Based on real events, Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me is the premiere production of West East Theatre, formed by Trent Baker and Richard Stables. This internationally awarded work by Irish dramatist Frank McGuinness is an obvious choice for actors wanting something hearty to grow facial hair for and, at nearly three hours, this piece of black, gritty realism is an actor’s dream script – but, as a watcher, I felt left out.
Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me explores how Adam (Stables), Edward (Baker) and Michael (Ezra Bix) survive their brutal incarceration. The cellar-like atmosphere of fortyfive downstairs is the perfect venue to create a sense of dank claustrophobia, so I wonder why the design made the place look so big and airy. It’s hard to feel their lack of space when the windows behind them make the cell look endless and the wall of light is a joke once it’s broken. As the cell felt too big, the captors lacked threat. There wasn’t a sense of “them” – their abductors – and the work could just as easily have been three blokes stuck in a cellar waiting for the zombies or the aliens to move away from the door.
I want to know why this was a story for me. I’m aware that I’m not a middle-aged man locked away, but this is a work that freely explores abandonment, frustration, boredom, hatred, family, love, friendship, freedom and loyalty – all of which are for me – and everyone else. The interpretation seemed so caught up in being real, that the big picture, the universality, was missing. The direction and performances seemed to concentrate on the micro of each scene, even each line, so that that the macro was lost. It didn’t take long to be able to predict the earnest hand gestures, the conscious pace and rhythm, or the moment when a performer would actively look away – because he’d stared too long at another actor and that wasn’t natural.
Each scene was so meticulously created, that it lessened the impact of the work as a whole. When music was unexpectedly used to underline emotion, it distracted from the emotion, as it had no place in the world already created for us and had not been established as part of the language. The night seemed so much about the performances, that the story was secondary. Even if they were the greatest performances ever; if we’re just admiring actors, rather than watching characters we care about and being drawn into their world – what is the point?
This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.
