Hollywood Ending

I reviewed Griffin Independent's Hollywood Ending over at Australian Stage - check it out here. (This play is part of the Rapid Write scheme - from zero to opening in eight weeks - and it's proof that good theatre can be made really fast!)

The Coming World

The Coming World runs until 3 July 2011 at Darlinghurst Theatre. By Christoper Shinn, directed by Caroline Craig.

The Coming World was, to me, a play almost completely incongruous with its title. The term 'coming world' is epic, bringing to mind far horizons, a sweeping scale, Lord of the Rings style cinematography and possibly a few apocalypses. However, what it was was a story about a girl who worked in a video store and her relationships with a set of rather dysfunctional twins. It may have been set on a beach, but the scale was hardly sweeping (in any case, on the Darlo stage, 'sweeping' would be rather difficult'). The Coming World was not exactly universal - instead, it was almost aggressively insular.

This insularity is not necessarily a bad thing, but - as noted above - it did put the play at odds with its title. Dora (Cheree Cassidy), who works in Blockbuster, is dating Eddie (Ian Meadows), who is stupid enough to get conned into being a drug mule. What Eddie does next ends up defining the entire story - his actions break like the waves of the beach on which the play is set (you see what I did there) over both Dora and his twin Ty, with whom Dora spends the second half of the play. Despite the ripple effects of Eddie's actions, however, there is a real sense of containment and claustrophobia about this play. Dora and Ty are both bound to and trapped by Eddie, even after Eddie removes himself from the picture. Apparently, The Independent said of this play:

"The Coming World is a small play, but, after it ends, you can still feel the ripples."

I feel this is a pretty fair assessment, but considering this small play had so much stuff packed into it, I feel like it should have been saddled with a less epic title.

Both Cassidy and Meadows were very effective in their roles - especially when I got used to the New England accent they affected. (Embarrassing note - I skimmed the blurb, missed the New and read the England, and thus spent the first five minutes thinking 'this is the worst English accent I have ever heard EVER!') Meadows seemed more comfortable as Ty than Eddie, and Cassidy seemed to relate better to him as this character rather than as Eddie. I felt that in both acting and directing, the second half of the play was superior to the first. The play was really about Dora and yet most of the time she was not the agent behind any actions. In the second half, interacting with Ty instead of Eddie, she at least got to move things forward a little instead of providing resistance for the increasingly erratic Eddie.

Caroline Craig's direction was intelligent - the salient plot points and themes were certainly hit - but I felt at times the play was a little sedentary and could have used an injection of movement. However, the writing, rather than the direction, is probably at fault for this - there is no point in a lot of the scenes where movement seems sensible. The little Darlo stage definitely suited the insularity of the piece and Charlotte Lane's design, coupled with the lighting design of Jack Audas-Preston, was outstanding. The scene where Dora was floating in the sea with the light shining through the seaweed/video tape was incredible. I loved it.

This play was definitely a small play - it didn't really have a lot in way of plot - but it crammed a lot of themes in there, and not all of them were necessary. In places, I felt it succumbed to a flaw common to literary fiction, which is themes for the sake of themes. Maybe I just didn't get it, but there was a massive emphasis on clothing and costume and tattooes and suchlike which just did not seem related to the plot or to characterisation in any salient way. To go all Year 9 English on it, if there had been more of an appearance vs reality bent to the play, maybe it would have been more appropriate. Despite only being an hour long, I felt like the script sometimes got bogged down in itself, obsessed with its own intensity and complexity.

Overall, The Coming World was a well-acted, well-directed, spectacularly designed night at the theatre - but at the end, I felt there were a few too many loose ends that needed tidying up. This was largely a) because of the plays proliferation of and preoccupation with OMGDEEPTHEMES; and b) the rather abrupt and out-of-the-blue ending, which to me (and to my psychology-studying sister, who was with me), did not seem in any way anticipated by the rest of the play. The production of it was very hard to fault, but I'm having trouble working out what The Coming World was trying to say. I do not expect theatre to spoon feed me answers - but in many cases, I would have liked to have understood where the questions were coming from.

Speaking In Tongues

Speaking In Tongues runs until 19 March at the SBW Stables Theatre, Kings Cross. By Andrew Bovell, directed by Sam Strong.

Speaking In Tongues is the closest to a perfect script I have ever encountered.

Bovell apparently amalgamated two separate scripts to make Speaking In Tongues - which is sort of obvious when you think about it, but has to be one of the happiest theatrical accidents ever. The thing that makes Speaking In Tongues so special is the way it's layered, the stories interwoven, intertwined, tangled. I'm struggling to think of a piece that's more cleverly structured, and the only one that comes close is When The Rain Stops Falling. Surprise, surprise, it's also by Andrew Bovell.

In the first act, we meet two couples - Leon and Sonja (Christopher Stollery and Lucy Bell) and Pete and Jane (Andy Rodoreda and Caroline Craig). All four go out drinking. Leon meets Jane. Pete meets Sonja. One couple cheats. One couple backs away. And from this one evening, the stone dropped in the limpid pool, the ripples spread wider and wider and wider.

Griffin Theatre's production of this play is simply outstanding. This script is brilliant but it's also VERY difficult for the actors, and I could not fault any of them. Not even a little bit, not even at all. Caroline Craig as Sarah in the second act was especially good, but seriously, if I was going to pick a flaw? I'd have to sit here for a really long time.

This play contains what has to be one of the most annoying theatrical devices ever - two people speaking at the same time, saying exactly the same thing. Hell, even Oscar Wilde didn't quite pull that one of - the bit in The Importance of Being Earnest where Cecily and Gwendolen simultaneously tell Jack and Algernon that their Christian names are an insuperable barrier and then Algernon and Jack simultaneously reply that they're going to be christened that afternoon doesn't really work even though it's meant to be a joke, and although I've seen a lot (like, a LOT) of productions of Earnest, I've never seen actors quite pull that moment off. If Oscar can't do, I would generally maintain that no one can...

*

...but they get it JUST RIGHT in Speaking In Tongues, and there is a LOT more than two lines spoken at the same time.

Maybe the reason that this device works in this play is because of the way just about everything seems to parallel everything else. Leon and Jane's experience mirrors Sonja and Pete's. The lives of these two couples are so intertwined that it seems only sensible that they would be saying the same things. It might seem contrived that Sonja happens to run into Jane the next night in a bar, Jane sitting and looking for Sonja's husband - but when you consider later how tangled the storyline of the first act is with the story of the second act, where Valerie the psychologist treats Sarah who might be sleeping with John and who saw Neil whose shoes Pete has; how Jane saw Nick throwing shoes that belonged to Valerie, a crime which is investigated by Leon... everything is coincidence in this world, because everything is connected.

*

Because of this, there is an intense claustrophobia in Speaking In Tongues, making Griffin's tiny diamond stage the perfect place to stage it. Every character is trapped - trapped in their own skins, in their own lives - but the minute someone does something to change it (like sleeping with someone they're not married to) the ramifications are instant. There is no personal change without changing everything. It's the dramatic articulation of the The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock - 'do I dare disturb the universe?'

*

It makes perfect sense to have the same actors playing multiple characters, because everything is connected and mirrored and paralleled (is that a word?) The only character who escapes is Valerie, and her solution is very... final. The door that opens that she runs through leads to a wilderness both lush and terrifying. It smacks a little of Picnic At Hanging Rock, the disappearance into the landscape, being consumed by it. This door - which obviously leads to death - is the only escape from the ripple effect of decisions within the universe of the play. (Sidebar: my sister and I have been wondering for ages whether there was a door at the back of the theatre there. We were convinced there wasn't. Seeing this play, we finally found out there was.)

*

I cannot speak highly enough of this production - the script, the acting, the direction, the set, the tech-y stuff... everything was 100% outstanding. It's hard to imagine a way this production could be better. I, for one, can't fathom it.

And if you haven't seen it, you're not going to be able to - it closes today and it's totally sold out. This tells us a few things: 1) I need to start writing reviews earlier; 2) I'm not the only one who thinks this show is excellent; and 3) you really, REALLY missed out.