Review: Madeline

Madeleine
Jenny Kemp and Black Sequin Productions
Arts House
6 August 2010
www.artshouse.com.au

Madeleine is the second in a cycle of works by Black Sequin Productions exploring mental illness.  Following bi-polar Kitten in 2008, Madeleine explores the effects of schizophrenia.

Director and writer Jenny Kemp says, "I am interested in how we can deal with mental illness, in a way that is positive and not one of denial." She is fascinated by the logic of the mentally ill and details her fascination on the stage.

Maddy is 19 and hears voices (as do the audience) that tell her she is a bride of Christ and responsible for the creation and care for the new Garden of Eden. Maddy's prodigal sister is desperate to get her help, her mother (also Madeleine) is angry that Maddy is controlling their lives and her father is doing what he can to help her survive her own world.

Like Kitten, Maddy is almost a textbook study of a disease.  She has lived with trauma (her twin drowned in the bath as a baby), is obsessed with menstrual blood, hears logical voices and dreams that she is raped by whispering voices in the dark – voices that could belong to God. And, also like Kitten, for all the moving performances and visual beauty, it feels too much like an academic study trying to be a community service announcement.

The dialogue is honest, but never sounds real because it lacks subtext.  Lines like, "Drugs are not the solution, she needs love" are at home in nightly soaps and don't feel right coming from the mouths of a family whose coping method is denial and non-communciation.

Nikki Sheils's performance as Maddy is engaging and brave, but she is played like a disease, not a person. Ironically by the end of the night, we know all about Maddy's illness, but too little about Maddy. This story about damaged people coping and could be so much more powerful if the obvious religious symbolism and  "this is what the disease is like" scenes were reduced to glimpses and moments, so that the audience (of intelligent people) could be free to care about the people rather than watch the disease at work.

It's hard not to compare Madeleine to Malthouse's current Sappho...in 9 Fragments as they both developed from academic perspectives. Sappho is far more academic, but it reaches our hearts because it sits in a recogniseable world with people who we understand, while Madeline, which has the stronger story, distances us, even if it does give us a lot of information about mental illness.

This review appears on AussieTheatre.com

Kitten

MIAF 2008

Kitten
Malthouse Theatre and Melbourne International Arts Festival
8 October 2008
Beckett Theatre, CUB Malthouse

Kitten is about the transformative nature of grief and explores one woman’s journey through its drowning, floating and cleansing effects.

Directed and written by Jenny Kemp (who directed the astonishing Woman Bomb) and designed by Malthouse’s wonderful Anna Tregloan, I was looking forward to something spectacular - but I found it distancing, frustrating and ultimately boring.

 Kitten’s husband has died and her obsessive search for him leads to her breakdown. This work depends on the audience’s empathy with and sympathy for its protagonist and their understanding of her emotional narrative. Having three Kittens, who were far too similar, left the character strangely underdeveloped. Instead of creating a fuller picture of Kitten, it felt like a competition for which Kitten the audience liked best.

The opening act was slow, quite and intense. The emotional intensity started high and didn’t change, so the characters had nowhere to go that wasn’t down. In a scene that should have bonded the audience with Kitten, we were physically separated by a curtain and never allowed the emotional space to get near her.

Act two was filled with over-obvious dialogue, like Manfred saying, “I think you’re out of control” (I suspect I wasn’t the only person muttering “derr” under my breath) but missed vital clues to her behaviour. I have no idea if Kitten liked, loved or loathed Jonah, her dead husband, and couldn’t even figure out her conscious, or unconscious, feelings for the onstage Manny.

Act three brought the bi-polar bear. This scene was hilarious, gorgeous and spectacular, but nothing prepared the audience for such an extreme and unexpected change of mood, tone and style. Despite all its prettiness, wit and absurdity, this act felt so awkward.

I could see the academic, intellectual and emotional intent behind Kitten, but I think the intent got very lost in the translation.

 

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com