Review: The Judas Kiss

The Judas Kiss
Mockingbird Theatre
15 March 2014
Theatre Works
to 22 March
theatreworks.org.au

Mockingbird Theatre continue to give us memorable text-on-stage productions of the plays that we wish we'd seen the original productions of, and give performers the chance to play roles that they've dreamed of. At Theatre Works this week, they're giving us The Judas Kiss: David Hare's imagining of the behind-doors conversations in a hotel before Wilde's arrest for gross indecency and in Naples after his release from gaol and not long before his impoverised death.

The first production, 1998, Sir David (The Blue Room, Via Dolorosa, The Hours) described as "deeply unsatisfactory" in a 2013 interview in The Guardian. He said it went "off kilter " as he "wanted to smash every cliche about Wilde" and by casting "Ireland's most famous heterosexual as Wilde, we were possibly trying to sail away from stereotypes a little too far". Liam Neeson was Wilde and Tom Hollander was his lover and downfall Bosie, Sir Alfred Douglas.  No matter how off kilter, I wish I'd seen it.

In 1999, Belvoir toured Neil Armfield's production in Australia (with Billie Brown as Wilde) and Armfield went to London in 2012 to direct a much more successful UK version (with Rupert Everett as Wilde).

Mockingbird's founder, Chris Baldock, is our Wilde. At first, I wanted him to stop being an idealised impression of witty Wilde – to be more off kilter – but as Wilde let his public persona drop behind the closed hotel doors, Baldock's performance developed into something far more complex and fascinating. It's clearly a role he's always wanted to play and his years of preparation are felt on the stage.

The rest of the cast (Nigel Langley, Oliver Coleman, Zak Zavod, Laurent Murtagh, Soren Jensen and Nores Cerfeda) all bring a personal understanding and empathy to their characters, which makes for heartfelt – if, at times, uneven – performances. And all occasionally stumble over the naturalism problem of how to stand and listen or disappear into the background.

Also not helping is a set that looks like a suburban amateur company's period-drama set used since the 1950s and finally left out for hard rubbish. Resources, demands of the text and the spacious Theatre Works stage are all understood, but it's a distraction and undermines the quality of the rest of the production.

Still, director Jason Cavanagh, with assistant director Celeste Cody, bring a world that's true to the (long) text while creating a curiosity about Wilde and a wish that he'd made different choices. I'd like to have seen more of the love between Wilde and Bosie as, in this play, it's this love (destructive, obsessive or unseen by anyone but the two of them) that governs all of Wilde's decisions and it would help to support his choices rather than wanting him to slap Bosie and run off with Robbie. And given the play opens with a nude and lusty boy-girl sex scene, there's an expectation that sex is going to play a much bigger part in the story.

The Judas Kiss has its off kilter moments, but they don't knock it too far off balance and, as the chances of seeing this play in the near future are slim, it's well worth seeing.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Equuas

Equus
Mockingbird Theatre
3 August 2013
Mechanics Institute
to 17 August
mockingbirdtheatre.com.au

Mockingbird Theatre continue to produce theatrically significant plays whose influence continues to be seen and felt in contemporary theatre. And there's no better way to understand these works than by seeing them. Reading a play is one thing, but plays are not created to be read, they are created to live and be shared with an audience. Mockingbird are currently sharing Peter Shaffer's Equus.

Written in 1973, the UK production of Equus (Shaffer's 12th significant work) went to Broadway and won Shaffer a Tony, Drama Desk and New York Drama Critics' award.  Shaffer's next work was Amadeus, which also won him awards. Equus most recently returned to Broadway in 2009 (and is mostly known because Harry Potter got his kit off).

It's a Freudian play about a uncovering why a young man violently blinded six horses in a stable. Seen from the perspective of the jaded middle-aged shrink treating the boy (Martin Dysart), it explores distorted and confused religion, passion and sexuality, and the writer is more certain about where to lay blame than the fictional psychologist is.

Chris Baldock directs a strong production that respects the text and reflects its famous productions. Its theatrical world is a stable where characters wait and watch the unfolding drama, while surrounded by the six horses who reflect the subconscious of the young man (Alan Strang) whose passion for the horses went so very wrong. It remains in the 1970s of the text, which helps to date the psychology practice and social attitudes (I doubt a contemporary Equus would resonate), while not detracting from any of the pain, confusion and desperate hope.

Highlight opening night performances were Soren Jensen (as Alan's dad), Maggie Chretien (as Alan's potential girlfriend) and Amanda McKay (as Alan's mum). The horses were also terrific. Some performances were still settling into the size and intimacy of the space and felt controlled by the actors, rather than the characters, especially when characters should be listening and reacting to what they hear rather than to their cue.

If you haven't seen, don't know or simply love Equus, see this production; it's a far better experience than reading the play and it's a far better work than many of the shrink dramas that it inspired. And with an overwhelmingly positive reaction to its first shows, it's already selling out, so booking is the best idea.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: How I Learned to Drive

How I Learned to Drive
Mockingbird Theatre
3 May 2013
Mechanics Institute Performing Arts Centre
to 18 May
mockingbirdtheatre.com.au

How I Learned to Drive won writer Paula Vogel the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1988. If you want to learn about American theatre, the list of Pulitzer winners is a fine place to start. This is a beautifully written work about a harrowing subject that finds a sympathy and forgiveness that's as uncomfortable as its subject.

Director Chris Baldock's new independent company Mockingbird Theatre are continuing to bring famous contemporary scripts to audiences who already love the works and introducing some incredible writers to new audiences. Last year we saw The Laramie Project and can look forward to Equus and Kiss of the Spiderwoman later this year.

One of my regular theatre cohorts at the opening of How I Learned to Drive started a convesation about whether shows should have trigger warnings. It's an argument that can't be answered easily and perhaps the poster shouldn't be running with "wildly funny" as its lead. I'm not a fan of the trigger warning trend; I think they encourage more people to read/watch something because it's juicy than save people from content they would rather miss. If you don't know, this play's about the sexual abuse of a child by her uncle.

Set in the 60s and 70s, L'il Bit (Sarah Reuben, who was also in The Laramie Project) remembers her relationship with Uncle Peck (Jason Cavanagh). It would be comfortable to see her as all innocence and him as all evil, but what makes this work so disturbing is its gut-wrenching honest exploration of a man who believes he's in love with a child and a child who believes she's helping her uncle. As we ask what her life would have been like without Uncle Peck, the moral lines are blurred and re-established and for all its uncomfortable honesty, it's its forgiveness that stays with you.

Cavanagh's Uncle Peck is the character you can't take your attention away from. It would be easy to play him as a pervy creep. It would also be easier to watch. But Uncle Peck is a likable, ordinary man. We know his behaviour is despicable, but Cavanagh lets us into Peck's mind and the most disturbing part of this work is feeling sympathy for a man who we think deserves no sympathy. After his performance in The Joy of Text at La Mama earlier in the year (heaps better that the MTC version) and his ongoing work in making The Owl and the Pussycat a new favourite indie venue, 2013 is looking to be a terrific year for him.

Reuben's L'il Bit is emotionally spot on in her relationship with Peck – he is the only person who treats her as an adult worth listening to, but it's only as an adult that she begins to understand the relationship – but her performance felt too memorised and I could see a bit of the adult actor stopping L'il But from feeling in control. The power of this work is in letting go of our understanding of the situation and in letting all of the characters feel in control, and I suspect that with a few shows over that Reuben's performance is now soaring.

Andrea McCannon, Juliet Hindmarsh and Sebastian Bertoli play the rest of the family and society who turn a blind eye (McCannon as Peck's wife and L'il Bit's mum is especially good). They are a kind of chorus, but their strength comes from their not seeing what the audience sees; through them we see how easy it is to miss or avoid seeing the obvious.

I've seen How I Learned to Drive before and I'll see it again. It's a stunning work that's uncomfortable  and uncomfortably liberating to watch and Baldock's production is one that'll stay with you long after you've left the theatre.

This production is supporting Child Wise, Australia’s leading international child protection charity committed to the prevention and reduction of sexual abuse and exploitation of children around the world.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

The Laramie Project

The Laramie Project
Mockingbird Theatre
11 November 2012
Chapel off Chapel
to 11 November
mockingbirdtheatre.com.au

The last performance of Mockingbird Theatre's production of The Laramie Project left a lot of the audience crying and some of the cast.

I didn't get along until the last night, but the season had plenty of great reviews, nightly tears, standing ovations and repeat visits. It wasn't a perfect piece of theatre, but perfection be damned when it's a story that reaches so widely and is told from the hearts of its performers and creators.

In the late 90s, I remember reading about a boy who was tied to a fence and bashed to death because he was gay. For a moment I felt for the boy and his family before moving onto the next story. Writer Moisés Kaufman was in in New York when this happened and took members of his Tectonic Theater Project to the town in Wyoming where it happened and interviewed people who lived there. Thanks to the result, The Laramie Project, over 30 million people know that boy's name was Matthew Shepard and are unlikely to forget his death.

Since its first performances in 2009, this eight-person piece of verbatim theatre (based on interviews from real people) has become the most performed plays in the US, and the 2002 HBO film took it to people who don't go to theatre. (Hint: You Tube.) The online project continues to extend the story and reach as far as it can, and in 2008 the company went back to Laramie and The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later was performed simultaneously in 100 US cities. In Melbourne, Red Stitch brought it to us.

I imagine that the worst a production of Laramie can do is to place the story so firmly in Wyoming that it distances its audience, but even then it can't help but force them to think about their own town.

The people of Laramie love Laramie, a town with "good people and lots of space". Matt Shepherd loved Laramie. There are people who won't wear a rainbow bandana and believe in the man/woman/child concept of family, but I've never been anywhere where there aren't. I knew someone like everyone talking on the stage.

What struck me especially about Mockingbird's production is that director Chris Baldock never shied away from the love of Laramie. It's easy to paint it as red neck town that's not us. It's braver and far more honest to stress the normality of the town.

Knowing the story, left me able to listen to more than the inexplicable horror of Matt's death. What struck home was the discussion of the boys who killed him. They were in their early 20s, but called boys. These were local boys known by everyone. Larmie's a town of 26,000 – that's a couple of Melbourne suburbs.They were good boys who had friends and jobs. No one interviewed said that they even considered that these boys would be so violent and their struggle is understanding how boys they knew could do this.

Which leaves me thinking of the boys I know. Boys I cuddled as babies, boys I grew up with and played chasey with, boys I worked or studied with, boys I dated, boys I snogged, boys I fucked, boys I ignored or stalked, boys I fancied, boys in my family, boy's I've written about. They're all good boys and I can't think of one I know who would do something so inhuman. But I've heard at least one from every one of these groups of good boys and lovely men make a poof joke or refer to "them" and think that I'd agree.

As I hope that no one I know ever had to suffers anything like what Matt Shepard did, I hope that I don't ever have to wonder how any one I know could hate so much as to cause such suffering.