Review: Cock

Cock
MTC
13 February 2013
Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne
to 22 March
mtc.com.au

Cock immediately demands attention and begs for jokes that are too easy. Yes, this Cock satisfies and I'd go for the ride again. Now let's move on.

First seen in 2009, the title of UK writer Mike Bartlett’s play brings expectations before a word is spoken. Some are met and more are dismissed as far more than cock comes to play.

Twenty-something John has been with his partner for seven years. On what seems to be a regular break, he meets someone else and falls in love. What causes the most shock for the scorned partner is that John’s new love is a woman. With a definite assumption that a choice must be made between the two and that John must define himself by the gender of his lover (as declared by the father who  comes to dinner), the tug of love is on.

While trying to make gender a non-issue in love, Bartlett’s writing dips (and occasionally plunges) into the stereotypes it’s trying to avoid: girly woman want romance in Paris and babies, gay men act like girls. But this is what makes this work so engaging. With neither lover being likeable enough to care who wins John (who’s neither a cock nor cocky), it forces its audience to question what’s going on rather than cheer for a winner and a happy ending.

But enough of the writing. It’s always great to see good newish writing on our commercial stages, but it’s more exciting to see new realisations of these works.

Leticia Caceres’s direction is exquisite and she’s created a production very different from the ones that brought attention to this play. She lets her actors (Tom Conroy, Angus Grant, Sophie Ross and Tony Rickards) bring themselves to their characters as she deftly controls the dark humour to build the so-awkward tension to its inevitable breathless breaking point. And she works with her co-creators to make something that Bartlett may never have imagined as he wrote it.

There’s Missy Higgins’s original music adding the emotional pull that’s not in the script, but it’s Marg Howell’s design (with Rachel Burke’s lighting) that brings so much to the stage and invents a world far from the propless bare stage asked for in the script. The Fairfax’s semi-circle stage is covered with huge white pillows that highlight the brightly mis-matched costumes while looking part-giant-bed and part-padded-cell. It makes for unstable ground that, as they are moved, support and cover, become walls, define arenas and continue to confirm that Howell is one of the best designers on Earth.

Cock's not as confronting, and more conservative, than as its title implies. All puns intended, it’s a softer, more gentle and far funnier work, which might have been a very different play if it weren’t called Cock.


Photo by Jeff Busby.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Savages

Savages
fortyfivedownstairs
18 August 2013
fortyfivedownstairs
to 8 September
fortyfivedownstairs.com

At the end of Savages, I had to joke about hoping that no one sees it on a first date because it was too uncomfortable to talk about its content.

Walking into 45downstairs, a sea of paper streamers and an imposing slanting deck beg for sunshine and a party, but I felt a heaviness in my belly the moment that George, Runt, Rabbit and Craze boarded their trip-of-a-lifetime cruise because I thought of Dianne Brimble. I didn't know that Savages was based on this case.

In 2002, 42-year-old Brimble took her daughter on their trip of a lifetime where she died from a combination of alcohol and the drug GHB, known as the date rape drug. There were eight men from Adelaide involved. There have been trials, but none have served gaol time for the death of the fat, old "ugly dog". One judge said that their suffering since her death is as bad as time incarcerated. I wonder if it would be the same if it had been one of the pretty young things the men had playfully harassed who had ended up face down and naked in the tiny cabin.

I struggle to find sympathy or understanding for these men and the people who support them.

This is what's so remarkable about Patricia Cornelius's new play; she tells a similar story from the men's point view. She doesn't justify, judge or even confront their behaviour, but tries to understand how men behave in a group; how nice-enough guys follow the pack and behave in ways they might never consider if they were alone.

This four (Lyall Brooks, Luke Elliot, James O'Connell and Mark Tregonning) are 40ish and have been mates for years. Before boarding they abandon their usual baggage of the women, exes and kids so that for a few days they can be the men they are meant to be. On board, there's nothing unusual about how they compete, share and exaggerate and each might easily pick up if they didn't expect to attract the attention of the gorgeous young or fear being judged by their mates.

Despite their constant guard, Cornelius writes men who are funny and vulnerable and real. She reveals secrets that help to understand them and lend hope that each will be man enough to walk away from his pack or lead them somewhere safe. But this isn't a safe story. It's one that needs to be told and talked about, because these are men aren't freaks or monsters. It's this that's so confronting and unsettling; they are men just like men we all know.

Director Susie Dee ensures that this is theatre that exposes the bigger picture by telling the smaller story. She guides her cast – who are all exceptional in roles that, I hope, are difficult to inhabit – from playful pack to broken men who need to re-claim power. This supports Cornelius's language that's bloke-on-the-street vernacular, but is heightened with a rhythm and delightfully self-conscious rhyme that reminds that it's telling a more important story.

And it all takes place on a set (Marg Howell) that makes the space feel as huge and isolated as a ship so far from land that the unspoken rules of civilisation don't apply. And with Kelly Ryall's sound and Andy Turner's lighting, it's raised and steeply slanted deck creates a world that's always moments away from toppling into the waves.

Savages is theatre that bites and barks at the end of a chain that's about to break, but we don't know if the escaping animal will attack or roll over for a tummy rub. Its telling is theatrically beautiful as it holds firmly to the belief that we – men and women – have to get closer to this problem if we're ever going to understand it and change ourselves so that the packs and everyone near them can feel safe.

This was on AussieTheatre.com

Review: By Their Own Hands

NEON Festival of Independent Theatre
By Their Own Hands
The Hayloft Project
14 June 2013
The Lawler
to 23 June
mtc.com.au

I can't say enough wonderful about the MTC's Neon Festival of Independent Theatre. Five of Melbourne's most loved, most successful and most challenging independent companies were asked to create something new – no restraints.

We're still talking about Daniel Schlusser Ensemble's Menagerie (based on the works of Tennessee Williams) and Fraught Outfit's On the bodily education of young girls (based on a 1903 novella and developed with a cast of teenagers from St Martins Youth Theatre). I wrote about them here.

The Hayloft Project's Benedict Hardie and Anne-Louise Sarks also adapted.  By Their Own Hands is the story of Oedipus and Jocasta; loved by the ancient Greeks and so popular that Freud based his own legacy on it. But do we really know the story and the people in it?

Anne-Louise and Benedict begin by simply telling the story, and telling it in a way that gets the audience involved without any embarrassment. There's nothing to be feared when they ask the audience to join them on the stage, and you might only be disappointed if you're not chosen as a cast member. (As Sphinx, I can end the year happy that I was recognised for my true talent.)

Then we're sent back to our seats and they tell the story again. It's now that a huge plastic curtain and Marg Horwell's design comes into play and they tell the tale in ways that remind us how these ancient tales are as much about now and us as they were 2500 years ago when Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus were all the rage.

The title alone takes responsibility away from the gods and fate. They show how conflicted a man must be to consider killing his baby, and the moment when Jocasta realises who she married is soul chilling.

There's been a lot of boring hoo-ha in recent weeks about the evils of adaption V original work. This season is proving that there's nothing unoriginal about adaption. These works are sending us back to the source texts (what would Freud say about me having all the Electras and none of the Oedipuses in my book shelf?) and letting us see them again with such fresh eyes.

I don't like the phrase "intelligent theatre", but By Their Own Hands explores the relationship between audience and stage and re-tells a known story so powerfully and originally that I could feel new brain cells growing.

And we have The Rabble's Story of O (after Pauline Réage's novel) and Sisters Grimm's The Sovereign Wife (inspired by Aussie-Aussie-Aussie cultural icons like Ken Done and The Man From Snowy River) to look forward to. After The Rabble's astonishing Orlando at last year's Melbourne Festival and having recently read O, I think this may be one of the most unforgettable shows of the year, unless they're outdone by the glorious camp trashiness of the Sisters who have promised/threatened the likes of a character called Poof Cop.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: The Histrionic

The Histrionic
Malthouse Theatre and Sydney Theatre Company
15 April
Merlyn Theatre
to 5 May
malthouse.com.au

Until I hit Google, I didn't  know about Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard. A quote from the New York Times that his works are "the most significant literary achievement since World War II" crops up a lot. As an over-educated reader, I guess I should know him, but The Histrionic hasn't encouraged me to seek out more Bernhard.

In 1982 Bernhard had a super-hissy when a Saltzburg Festival theatre wouldn't turn off emergency EXIT signs and he cancelled the season because "A society that can't deal with two minutes of darkness can do without my play". He then went all meta and returned to the same theatre with a dark comedy about a living-treasure genius artist performing his greatest work in a town that's more interested in its pigs and sausages – complete with ironic rants about EXIT signs.

I love little more than art and writing, but I care little for self-important art and writers. Even with its satirical guise, The Histrionic is still so close to reality that I didn't care.

Billie Brown joyfully embodies Bruscon, the self-obsessed genius who has to perform even if his cast/ family and audiences don't live up to his standards. In a career-highlight performance, the work is mostly a one-sided conversation with Bruscon and for all its insight and genuine wit, I didn't care if he succeeded, failed or was eaten by the pigs.

I didn't care about the writer or his art because there's nothing he's saying that we don't know.  I know people like Bruscon and his cast and, even with their lost souls and broken hearts, I'm happy to light the way out and live without him.

But what makes this production so intriguing and enjoyable is that director Daniel Schlusser and his wonderful cast make us care for everyone else on the stage. The good-hearted landlord (Barry Otto), his wife (Kelly Butler) and daughter (Katherine Tobkin) and Bruscon's wife (Jennifer Vuletic) and children (Josh Price and Edwina Wren), say little, but great theatre and irresistible performance isn't really about getting the most lines.

As Bruscon pontificates, they accept and suffer in a marvellous backstage void filled with saw dust and old props that have been left to decay (designed by Marg Horwell and lit by Paul Jackson). With the likes of huge fruit and veg, a giant hand and massive moose, you can't not laugh at and love the artifice of theatre – and there's the bonus game of "what show is that prop from" (hooray for another appearance of the bi-polar bear).

Schlusser's voice is by far the more interesting one in The Histrionic and he balances the line between self-indulgence and art so deftly that even the likes of Bruscon are forgiven, if not loved.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com