Asylum

Asylum plays at the Old 505 Theatre from February 3-21 2015. Presented by Apocalypse Theatre Company.

Asylum is important theatre. A collection of rehearsed readings of plays responding to the implementation of the Operation Sovereign Borders policy, it is an evocative mosaic of the issues facing and the lives of those seeking asylum in Australia.

 This is a massive project. Over 65 artists are participating, and the effort that Apocalypse Theatre Company have gone to in order to bring Asylum to the stage is incredible and must be applauded. The season is broken into five blocks of five or six plays each, so it would be possible to attend a number of times and have an entirely different experience.

I saw the second block of plays. There is a tendency for a lot of political theatre to be didactic – which I think would have been more than understandable in this case, given the issue – but the pieces I saw didn't really veer too far in this direction. (As an aside – I think verbatim theatre has become popular in political stories as a way of combating this tendency towards didacticism.) This wasn't a two hour lecture and it wasn't preachy. Instead, it focused on small, human, individual stories – often a much more powerful way of communicating – and on evoking the mythic.

There were some standout pieces in the block I saw. Melita Rowston's Bread and Butter was a beautiful story about an Afghani woman who sought asylum in Australia, and has now finally found happiness and a new family to replace the one the Taliban took from her in the bakery where she works, although she remains haunted by fears that her temporary protection visa will be revoked and she will lose everything. The writing was a tiny bit heavyhanded at times, but any flaws were masked by a luminous, joyous performance by Josipa Draisma, who I could easily watch for hours. Similarly brilliant is Jan Barr in Mary Rachel Brown's Self-Service. This piece – in which Pamela, who works at Woolworths, is forced to deal with her trainee Abdul-Rasheed becoming her boss – manages to be hilarious at the same time as horrifying as Pamela's unthinking casual racism is slowly revealed.

 But I think my favourite piece of the night was Amir Mohammadi's Gol Pari, a distinctly Afghani piece (like, literally – it was translated from Dari the day before the performance) which had a whiff of the mythic about it. It reminded me of the myth of Psyche and her sisters, or Cinderella and her stepsisters, as Pari Gol, the third wife of a rich man, is victimised and falsely accused of immodesty by the other two wives and her community. The most remarkable thing about this piece is its context. Mohammadi is from Afghanistan himself, a radical theatremaker who campaigned for women's rights, illegally rehearsing plays like this one and secretly showing them to an all-female audience. Someone needs to give him a big arts grant immediately, because this is the kind of theatre we need to be seeing – theatre that can bring hope, foster rebellion, and change the world.

Even leaving aside the fact that it is certainly vital and necessary theatre, Asylum is enjoyable theatre. It is evocative, engaging, and incredibly moving, and you should definitely spend your money on it - not least because all profits go to the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre. 

 

*NB: I’m just about to hand my PhD in, so a more regular reviewing schedule should resume. My apologies if you invited me to something in the last six or so months and I didn’t respond – my inbox got super out of control with thesis revisions. Things are basically back to normal now!

We're Bastards

My review of We're Bastards (Two Peas) at the Old 505 is now up at Australian Stage. Have a look at what I thought here.

Decadence

Decadence runs at the Old 505 Theatre from December 4-7 2013. By Steven Berkoff, directed by Serhat Caradee.

Decadence is one of Berkoff’s least performed plays, perhaps because it is hella difficult. Written largely in pseudo-Shakespearean verse, it is an immense undertaking for two actors. On stage the whole time, they must play two different couples: one, a wealthy, upper-class pair of adulterous lovers, and the other, a working class pair with murderous and revolutionary tendencies (or so they say). It is so, so tough – but happily, this production from A Priori Projects is a great one. Searing, scintillating, this is Berkoff done so, so well.

This particular production has a bit of a history. It began life at the Sydney Fringe Festival this year, where it took home an award in the theatre category. (I didn’t see it then, as I was overseas, but if it was as good then as it is now, then that award is well-deserved.) In March, it will tour to the Adelaide Fringe Festival. It’s playing a limited season at the Old 505 now as a fundraiser for that tour. I’m not sure if tickets are still available, but if you can’t get to the Adelaide Fringe, then you should do your absolute best to get to this in its short run. It’s worth it.

Decadence is, like so much of Berkoff’s work, preoccupied with questions of class. It lambasts the wealthy upper classes: Helen and Steve, our rich couple here, have everything. They are so consumed by their ennui all that they can do is consume more and more, grinding the faces of the poor. They tell each other stories of their decadent adventures, whether hunting or fucking or generally exploiting. They are so bored they almost seem to forget they are having a love affair: even the frisson of excitement that comes from their adultery cannot penetrate their boredom. All that is left is for them to suck more and more into their (figurative) gaping maws, as brilliantly literalised by the scene towards the end where they go to a high class restaurant and gorge themselves on food and champagne until they are sick.

Our innate sense of narrative structure makes us feel like they should be punished, but they never are. The working class couple, Les and Sybil, plot Steve’s demise, but they never actually do anything about it. Les is all bark, no bite: he certainly talks a good revolutionary game, and he is full of ideas of how to knock Steve off, from the relatively realistic through to the absolutely ridiculous, but he is nothing more than that – talk. Unlike Helen and Steve, these two fuck – all the time – but it is more out of the excitement over what they plan to do than anything else. When their plans prove to be impotent, so too quickly fades their sex lives. This is not the moral poor common in so many other works, who are exploited and downtrodden by a demonised rich, but a poor who are uncomfortably complicit in their oppression: the rich are useless, and yet the working class don’t do anything about. “I am not yet a desperate man,” Les declaims, making us wonder what a truly desperate man would look like.

This is a scorching satire of capitalism: not just the external trappings, but the internalisation of it. The team behind this production have clearly understood this and have delivered a sharp, incisive production. Serhat Caradee’s direction is deceptively simple and very effective, and Rowan McDonald and Katherine Shearer both deliver outstanding performances. (The only criticism I have is that sometimes when Shearer goes into her upper vocal registers it is hard to understand what she is saying, but this is a relatively easy fix.) This is really biting theatre, deeply political and disquieting. A Priori have put together a great production, and I hope their tour to Adelaide goes swimmingly. Highly recommended.

Last

Over at the Black Sheep blog, I reviewed Last at the Old 505. Read my thoughts about this lovely show here.

You can also read my interview with the show's creator Helen O'Leary - that one's here.

Sydney Fringe interview - Helen O'Leary

More interviews! Over at the Black Sheep blog, I had a chat to Helen O'Leary about her upcoming Sydney Fringe show Last at the Old 505 theatre. Have a read here.

Ride

I reviewed Ride by Jane Bodie at the Old 505 Theatre as part of the Sydney Fringe festival. You can check out my review here over at Australian Stage Online.