Review: Detroit

Detroit
Red Stitch Actors Theatre
28 August 2015
Red Stitch
to 26 September
redstitch.net

Sarah Sutherland. Detroit. Photo by Jodie Hutchinson

Detroit never says it's about Detroit. It's about suburbs where communities are falling apart and the hope of the hard-work way to an easy happy-ever-after is disintegrating in a world where the only real trickle down is insecurity and crisis. Directed by Tanya Dickson, the Red Stitch production keeps its feet in America but feels like it's made for the suburbs that many of us abandoned in our 20s and find ourselves heading back to in our 30s and 40s.

Writer Lisa D'Amour is from New Orleans, studied playwriting in Texas, and is also known for co-creating site-specific interdisciplinary works. Her play Detroit was first presented by Steppenwolf in Chicago in 2010 and on Off-Broadway in 2012. It was a Pulitzer finalist and won the Obie Award for Best New American play in 2013.

Ben (Brett Cousins) and Mary (Sarah Sutherland) had nice safe jobs, then Ben was laid off and is on his computer starting his own financial planning business. The house next door is a mirror image of theirs, except it's falling apart. It was also empty until Kenny (Paul Ashcroft) and Sharon (Ngaire Dawn Fair) move in and come over for a barbecue and talk about how they met in rehab and are trying to buy the house by working in a warehouse and a call centre. In a place where neighbours no longer talk to each other, everyone welcomes a convenient friendship that doesn't ask too many questions or notice just how broken their new friends are.

The tiny stage at Red Stitch isn't made for sprawling backyards and at first Matt Adey's set of two white dollhouse-esque houses and mini yards feels like it's being squished into the space. The the first scene ends and the white becomes a screen for images moving down the unchanging-but-constantly-changing suburban streets. This makes the mini houses defy the space and brings us into the hugeness and unexpected beauty of the suburbs, which some of us drove from to enjoy to the inner-city theatre.

The writing's bitterly funny and sprinkled with symbolism like a planters wart eating into the soul/sole of the community and touches of magical realism as the characters describe their dreams. The pitch-perfect performances revel in its comedy but are grounded in its gritty truth, and the direction finds an uncomfortable truth that's as much part of Melbourne as it is Detroit.

I wonder if I'd have laughed so much if I didn't live in Highett.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Day One. A Hotel, Evening

Day One. A Hotel, Evening
Red Stitch
20 November 2011
Red Stitch
to 17 December

The only thing that over shadows Joanna Murray-Smith's complex plot and labyrinth structure is her delicious and quotable wit. Back in a small theatre and with Red Stitch's boutique creators, the world premiere of Day One. A Hotel, Evening delivers a world so familiar that it could hurt to watch, if it weren't so damn funny.

There are two 40-something couples (Kate Cole, Dion Mills, Sarah Sutherland and John Adam) who are attempting to "build a postcode" and develop an outer-city suburb that they would never visit. They're wealthy enough to still need to be good looking, bored enough to drift from any middle class notions of fidelity and hurt enough to contemplate revenge. Throw in a promiscuous and pretty 22-year-old actor (Anna Sampson) and her philosophising hit-man husband, and there's a made-in-Melbourne farce that's guaranteed to please – unless it's meant to be a dark comedy.

In farce, we can laugh 'til we cry at hurting characters because we don't love them enough to care (like Basil Fawlty or anyone in The Importance of Being Earnest), but in dark comedy, we see their broken souls and the laughter comes at the cost of feeling their pain (like David Brent or the likes of Who's Afraid Of Virginia Wolf ). All are as witty as a wit in a wit competition with a superior wit, but the freedom of farce allows the pain and confusion to create bigger and heartier laughs without the cost of empathy.

Murray-Smith's clever jokes, satire and mirror recognition bring easy laughs, made easier by the gorgeous performances, but the tone skates and slips without control. Sutherland's aggressive aggressive (it's easier than passive aggressive) Stella delights in her over-the-topness, then Hayward's Ray makes us want a happy ending, and for all the brilliant banter between Mills and Adam (can "fuck plagiarist" please enter our vernacular), I have no idea what they were hoping we would feel or if we were meant to feel anything other than admiration.

I'll remember "Love is not a guinea pig", but I've already forgotten the names of the characters and, I suspect that I'll quickly forget the ending because I didn't know if I was meant to fall off my chair in crying shock about the cost of love, or laughingly wet myself at its inevitability.

Photo by Jodie Hutcinson

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Review: That Face

That Face 
Red Stitch Actors Theatre
30 April 2010
Red Stitch

That Face is the show I'm going to be comparing everything else to for the rest of the year.

UK writer Polly Stenham was 19 when she wrote That Face. Within a year it was leaving Royal Court audiences gob smacked and transferred to The Duke of York Theatre in the West End. It's appearing in major company programs all over the world and Melbourne can thank our theatre gods that Red Stitch secured it for us.

With a balance of black comedy and gut-kick emotion, Strenham's world sits on a precipice of uncomfortable familiarity letting its audience fall into its depths and crawl out reeling.

Teenage Mia turns to her brother Henry for help after an incident with Valium and an initiation at her boarding school, but Henry has already dropped out of school to look after their alcoholic mother and only the thought of their wealthy and absent father returning can kick him into action, or the attention of Mia's friend Izzy.

With unfair choices and impossible dilemmas, Strenham's debut work belies her age dramatically and emotionally. Her adults are seen through the eyes of her teenagers, which reveals the raw impact of their behaviour on their children without forcing blame. Mother Martha nods to her Whose Afraid of Virgina Wolf namesake and surpasses Albee's Martha with her out of control controlling behaviour. And Strenham brings a refreshing authenticity to her teenage characters that lets them feel deeply and irrationally without the condescending tone often implied by more "mature" writers.

The Red Stitch creative team capture the truth and heart of this remarkable script. Sarah Giles direction sustains a propelling tension that allows moments of relief without ever letting the underlying questions fade or allowing the extreme characters to control the pace or focus.  Claude Marcos's design feels at one with the direction and uses the small Red Stitch stage to it's full advantage by making the dominating bed a sunken level and adding a carpet wall that brings its own welcome wit.

Tim Potter as Henry was selected for Red Stitch's first Graduate Programme in 2008 and is already one of Melbourne's most astonishing actors. Matt Smith (the new Dr Who) was the original Henry and Potter should soon be as well known and respected. Lauren Henderson (Mia) and Lucy Honigan (Izzy) bring a rare clarity and depth to their teen girls.  Dion Mills (Hugh) gives the strongest performance I've seen from him and Sarah Sutherland's Martha is as complex as the character's addiction and her scenes with Potter are reason enough to see That Face.

Red Stitch quietly put our larger companies to shame. See That Face for an an adrenaline shot to remind you that theatre can and should be this bloody brilliant.

This review appears on AussieTheatre.com.