PROBLEM CHILD

WOLF LULLABY
presented by the New Theatre, August 2014

There’s a lot going on in Hilary Bell’s deceptively simple Bedtime Mystery, not least of which the gripping plotline, but more importantly the questions the play brings to the fore about human behaviour. None of these are answered satisfactorily (if that’s your thing), or if an answer is attempted, it raises further problems.

The deepest questions touch on the vexed issues surrounding depression; with the potency of the “wolf” motif throughout looming just out of reach, just a stone’s throw from the more familiar image of the Black Dog found in the discourse du jour. For those who may have family, friends or who suffer from it themselves might find these kinds of symbols useful. In my case they are inadequate, only a partial representation of the “swallowing” effect a foul mood can have. For in the end, one is solely responsible for their thoughts and feelings, and especially the actions which may follow. The poetic image of the outside Wolf or Dog as a manifestation of the darkness we feel denies our own culpability and ability to control our choices. But that’s just me.

It may be that Bell is pointing to the deficiencies of questions surrounding ‘intrinsic evil’ (to borrow a phrase from the Currency House blurb), by framing it in an almost supernatural tone: were perpetrators of heinous crimes “swallowed” or possessed by otherwise inexplicable darkness would this exempt them? Or does this merely exempt us as a society from a tacit complicity in criminal behaviour?

This is the microcosm that the play presents, and the blame shifting that occurs surrounding the family and events of the play echo all manner of sophistry we might hear in the public discourse surrounding violent crime. The play is set in Tasmania and writ around the time of the horror of the Port Arthur shootings in 1996. It was said ad nauseum that was the day “Tasmania lost its innocence” (with the usual hand wringing speculation on the murderer Martin Bryant as “monstrous”). To set the record straight, this was far from the first of violent crimes committed in the area, it’s what we don’t talk about which is most revealing about the denial of our collective social conscience. I refer to the massacre the Tasmanian Aboriginal people and theft of their land by what amounted to the governing power in the day.

We as a nation are in the process of reconciling these crimes and I mention it in the context of this play because it relates directly to the notion of taking responsibility for our past actions. We may have committed them in the shroud of colonialism, a kind of formative cultural innocence – but we cannot deny them forever.

This production is aided enormously by the performances, and we will break tradition by examining the cast in some detail. The work they do is a significant element in the impact of the play, both drawing us in and repelling us to complement the script.

If you haven’t seen or read the play, plot spoilers may follow. It is at its heart, a mystery, so I recommend seeing it for the greatest impact.

At the centre of the piece is a nine year old child Lizzie Gael played by Maryellen George. Her portrayal is a conundrum, nearly pure innocence with flickers of childlike mischief belying the horror of what she is accused. When she refers to the “wolf” – it is a truthful fear of being swallowed up. More horrifying is that no-one wants to listen. This contradiction of guilt and naivety is a very nuanced performance that betrays the surface of childish simplicity.

The surrounding adults give almost no indication of a response to these cries for help. They will see her in the simplicity of appearances and facts. The eponymous wolf of her imagination is nothing to be taken seriously, instead they lurk and linger around the edges of what for Lizzie is the explanation they so desperately seek. The exasperation builds from the parents in the face of their daughter’s litany of explanatory secrets and lies. Lucy Miller and David Woodland give a truthful and moving account of this mounting tension and frustration and guilt shifting and eventual estrangement as they consistently fail to find an answer. Only in the final moments do we get a sense that the Wolf is real, with the darkness now consuming the parent as it did the child.

Peter McAllum brings his mellifluous vocal skill to the role of the Police Detective undertaking the thankless task of assessing the young girl’s guilt or innocence. The tensions in his characterisation – manifested from the early scenes where he’s almost bullying Lizzie inside a gaol cell, to their final scene where he’s far more soothing and gentle toward her, having taken an adoptive parental role (if not in officially, at least symbolically on behalf of the state) – capture much of what the play is asking us.

I don’t think there’s much value in the question most of this play’s commentariat seem to be drawn to about “inherent evil” and such. Reading the various responses and even promotional material surrounding the play it’s a recurring theme. Maybe there is such a thing, and maybe there isn’t. The debate will go on for years to come as it has for millenia past. More pressing, as raised by the rather frightening picture of the girl Lizzie taken away from her parents, and condemned to a life of confinement and misery – if an otherwise innocent child commits a crime – what can we do about it? Our systems of justice and rehabilitation in this context seem woefully inadequate.

This play is a dark path, but one worth exploration. Powerful performances highlight a difficult, compelling script and the play is as good as its reputation precedes.

Wolf Lullaby, By Hilary Bell, featuring Maryellen George, Peter McAllum, Lucy Miller, David Woodland. Directed by Emma Louise. Playing at the New Theatre until September 13th 2014.

THE ART OF THE MONOLOGUE

HIGH WINDOWS, LOW DOORWAYS

presented by subtlenuance at the TAP Gallery, March 2014

 

” ‘Tis strange – but true; for truth is always strange;
Stranger than fiction; if it could be told,
How much would novels gain by the exchange! “

– Lord Byron, Don Juan

 

pictured: Peter McAllum (photo courtesy Zorica Purlija)

It’s not a new tradition, by any means, but certainly a trend in the local independent theatre sector; the re-emergence of the monologue as dramatic form, and particularly the re-telling of the personal. Recent months in Sydney have found theatres small medium and large hosting a variety of curated (collated? collected?) works of the simple yet eminently complex and yes, strange tales told by actors, alone or with chorus; true stories from their lives.

One isn’t privileged enough to travel interstate or overseas to know if this trend is global yet – it feels very Sydney, very Right Now – to reach and look into the personal journeys of the people who make this city what it is. A year ago with The Political Hearts of Children this phenomena was observed, but since then we’ve also seen Performance 4A’s Stories Then And Now (using the “William Yang method”) – featuring incredible family histories and conflicts leading into more personal and moving journeys as the actor relates the tale of their happening to be here, in Australia, at this time.  These are vital histories for the city’s coming of age; a step toward a true embrace of our diverse roots, and storytelling is so bound up in this land that the intimate circle of the small theatre has begun to gel into a ritual engagement of sharing. 

It’s something that will grow and evolve as teams of writers and actors and storytellers and theatricians collaborate with each project. But the broad strokes are forming.  A writer is teamed with an actor or director to find a set of truths to convey, or question, or ignore, however they might. Sometimes it’s within a broad theme and curated for context (like Augusta Supple’s productions of recent years Singled Out or A View From Moving Windows) – slices of modern life, cut into individual short tales of fantasy or memory.

The trick with these monologues is that it doesn’t matter which parts are true. Which parts are impossible.

The trick is that it’s not even a trick. Know your audience, and the monologue is a communion.

We are there with these actors, we are there with the impossible, the fantastic, the remote.

The German theatre historian and theorist Max Hermann noted: “The most important aspect of the theatre art is the performance” (Research on the History of German Theatre in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance,1914). Distinguishing from the notion of the “classic” academic theatre text as literature –  and identifying the ritualistic elements of the performance proper as a text unto itself. This duality of text / story vs text / performance is key to the emergence of this personalised framing of theatre art.

Simply put it is the confluence of actor and audience in the ritual space which makes these works so powerful.  Add that we can reach into the personal journeys of seven (using the Gilchrist method) tales at once creates a tapestry of the personal, spiritual, philosophical and emotive memories that make us who we are.

The stories are unique to the actors, translated back by seven different writers with care and diligence and craft, and then translated once again to the performance realm.  And as audience we are taken with them into the most uncharted and dangerous and moving territories, into the realm of the impossible, the irrational, beyond death, into questions of free will and fatalism. 

Hard to believe some critics did not find this “confronting enough” – but in a world so desensitised to possibility, so attuned to cynicism, I supposed some people just want their art to be less subtle, more “Piss Christ“.  Not this time. Gilchrist has weaved a truth of wonder and confusion, not a beacon but a kind of blanket, that maybe on the cold nights of winter we might find comfort we are not alone.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.

Mark Twain

HIGH WINDOWS LOW DOORWAYS presented by subtlenuance

Written by Ellana Costa, Noelle Janaczewska, Jonathan Ari Lander, Mark Langham, Katie Pollock, Alison Rooke and Melita Rowston. Performed by Kit Bennett, Matt Butcher, Alice Keohavong, Naomi Livingstone, Peter McAllum, Gavin Roach and Helen Tonkin. Directed by Paul Gilchrist, until March 30 at the TAP Gallery.

that would be a happy ending

The Pillowman.
New Theatre, March 2013.

A must see for theatre writers – The Pillowman is a modern horror classic in the vein of – actually we’re stumped here – Frankenstein? Nosferatu? Accidental Death of An Anarchist? The Trial? Stephen King’s IT? None of them quite match. There are even shades of Havelian absurdity but Martin McDonagh is a true original, weaving together something akin to a Grimm’s Faery Tale of courage and imagination. This is true horror in that what is not said, what is not seen is so much more brutal than what we do. It’s such a fine line between revulsion in black comedy and the production does not mess around, delivering a tight back and forth of shock and laughter counterpointed with some meta-text that is both chilling and provocative.

Outside time, without extension* the world of the play switches like a light between the dank cells of an unnamed police state and some of the more depraved paths of the human imagination and storytelling we’ve taken. Immediately there are comparisons with public debates on hot-button issues such as police brutality, censorship and media regulation, and the always popular right-to-silence / free-speech double whammy. Context. Think that’s enough for one play? Just wait. You will be challenged on your beliefs on these subjects by curtain. The ensemble delivering on all fronts to suspend all kinds of disbelief while also balancing the kind of audience dislocation necessary for the material to work.

This is not a play for the faint-hearted. There are child-assault triggers and explicit language that will shock. But not in the way you expect. The beauty of the words here demonstrate the power of literature in performance that three little words, followed by silence and a look between two men can destroy even the staunchest of audience. Totally absorbing, this is what we look for in a play, to challenge and suggest alternative realities, to provoke the heart and mind and soul. Another quality production from the team at the New. Recommended.

*with apologies to Beckett

THE PILLOWMAN by Martin McDonagh, directed by Luke Rogers. Featuring Julian Dibley-Hall, Lauren Dillon, Michael Howlett, Peter McAllum, Jeremy Waters, Oliver Wenn.
At The New Theatre until April 13.

pay attention to the details…

THE WEIR
Presented by The New Theatre, March 2012

Now in it’s final week, The Weir is a fine production in the vein of claustrophobic and comedic menace a-la Brendan Behan or (more recently) Martin McDonagh. The play is less action-heavy than one might expect of a play clearly influenced by the Irish Masters, instead drawing its narrative cloak across the past histories and ancient legends of the deathly quiet moors of the fabled green countryside. It gently fuses the staple small-town Irish foibles of boozing, frugality and pointless rivalry into a creeping series of supernatural mythologies of the land, gradually shifting from the worlds of fantasy (although one tends to believe every word) into the more familiar flights of fear that brush against us in the wee hours (usually to do with love and liquor – not necessarily in that order)… One forgets which metaphysical frights are more forboding; those of ancient lore, the night-faeries of folktales; or the modern banshees of the heart, loneliness and loss. Which send more chilling rhythms into your soul? With unobtrusive direction and an exquisitely detailed set, this small-town bar is a refuge against the dark and cold, one held together with the mortar of community, without which the really frightening question is just where would we be without it?

One cannot go past the lineup of actors for a great night’s entertainment. If you haven’t seen one or more of these fine thespians treading the boards in Sydney recently; then you haven’t been hitting the non-mainstream circuit (for shame!) and this production offers a fine taste of the talents available when one strays along the road-not-taken. To be sure, all are terrific storytellers on their own. This is the kind of performance when a simple anecdote becomes a world of its own and in ensemble; with the kind of half-nostalgic eeriness of the text you are guaranteed to be taken into another world. Catch a glimpse of this before it disappears…

The Weir, by Conor McPherson, directed by Alice Livingstone; featuring Patrick Connolly, Barry French, Lynden Jones, Peter McAllum and Amanda Stephens Lee. Plays at the New Theatre until March 31st.