Review: On the production of monsters

On the production of monsters
Melbourne Theatre Company
25 May 2012
Lawler Studio
to 9 June

Local writer Robert Reid wrote On the production of monsters for us. While the main stage MTC shows try to reach those who are happy to subscribe to capital-T-theatre for a night of capital-C-culture, the smaller Lawler Studio program starts with great scripts, employs some of Melbourne's best creators and creates theatre for those of us who want more than just an easy night away from Masterchef.

Reid has been writing plays in Melbourne since the late 90s. Like The Joy of Text, his 2011 MTC main-stage debut, Monsters is about unequal power and shocks with a humour that's as black as a Fitzroy fashion boutique.

Monsters was born in 2008 when Bill Henson's art (the photos of naked children) caused a mighty hoo ha. It's a story that starts in a laneway cafe with a twenty-something couple  scoffing at hipsters and talking about baristas, and interweaves a think-before-you-press-send-it email with a primary school river-cleaning project and a too-eager new journalist. Then it gets complicated as a damaged power-PR exec, a treadmill-jogging lawyer, a sensitive school teacher and an Angry-Birds-addicted PA jump into the whirlpool.

Reid's opinions about the issues are clear, with his bitterly dark laughs balanced with painfully gentle moments of poignancy, yet its strength is his leaving plenty of room for the audience to re-think their own opinions about the questions asked about art, power and exploitation. More importantly, he shows how un-winnable debates and un-thought-through opinion can ripple down until everyone drowns.

Director Clare Watson lets Reid's voice free on the stage as she deftly finds balance in his uneasy humour, and she lets Virgina Gay and James Saunders, who play all the characters, find the perfect tone. She also lets them define each character through their performances, rather than messing it up with character props.

Reid tickles zeitgeists from the viral internet sneezing baby panda (that he references almost as much as I do) to the decency arguments around the taking of naked photos, but its genuinely hip charm comes from its reflection of oh-so-cool, coffee-obsessed, word-using, inner-city urbanites who have a point scoring system for hipster-spotting and are so aware of their own irony that they probably secretly award points about themselves.

With references that left most of the audience grinning with he's-writing-about-me recognition, Reid's grasp of Melbourne's sub-culture is possibly as fine as Edna's early reflections on Moonee Ponds. Especially as it's supported by Andrew Bailey's gorgeously nostalgic pop-up design with treats like a hidden train, metcards, movie posters, cool-again bean bags and the best toaster ever.

On the production of monsters isn't the happiest view of the world, but is very funny and Robert Reid is a Melbourne writing voice that needs to be shared and loved.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Photo by Jodie Hutchinson

Review: Song of the Bleeding Throat

Song of the Bleeding Throat
The Eleventh Hour
28 January 2011
The Eleventh Hour Theatre
to 12 February
www.theeleventhhour.com.au

David Tredinnick (writer), Brian Lipson (director) and Neil Pigot (actor) are some of my favourite Melbourne theatre creators. I'm adding actors Ann Browning, Richard Bligh and James Saunders to the list as their performances in Song of the Bleeding Throat were remarkable, but I have no idea what this show is trying to say.

In his program notes Lipson says that when he first read the play he could "barely comprehend it" and eventually understood that it was written to be performed. As someone watching it performed, I could barely comprehend it and wouldn't mind a read so I might begin to understand it.

The tsunami of text, which includes quotes from Marx (Karl) to Barnum, is so overwhelming that it  becomes noise. The creators familiarity and understanding of it is clear, but as an audience we are coming to it for the first time and it's a struggle to keep up.

The opening scenes mimimally replicate Tait's Chealsea Interior painting of Thomas and Jane Carlyle with their dog, and with Pigot as the most delightfully dry Absurd-like stage manager of sorts, a mood of comic anticipation is set. There are wonderfully original and funny moments throughout, but its completeness drowns in the words – even with the welcome catch up space of drugs and farts.

The second half turns literally turns the theatre around and Pigot is Abraham Lincoln, Bligh is Walt Whitman, Saunders is John Wilkes Booth and Browning is the statue of Liberty. Again, the performances are superb, the staging and design are immaculate and the final "I sing the body electric" moment (the Fame, not the Whitman version) made my heart glow with ironic nostalgic joy, but I still had no idea what it was about or who it was talking to and was glad that it was over.

For all it's exquisite technique, intelligence and super well-read cleverness that rightly deserves to be admired (and maybe envied), this is the kind of theatre that makes you feel like an uneducated twat if you don't understand it. It reminded me of going to a Walt Whitman lecture in 1987 from a professor determined to show how much he knew and how little smart arse undergrads knew. I only chose American Lit because Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was on the reading list ... although part of me must have listened because I recognised Whitman quoting Whitman and had a burst of over-educated smugness. But I had to Google Tait and the Carlyles.

This review appears on AussieTheatre.com