Antigone: The Burial at Thebes

Antigone: The Burial at Thebes (Furies) runs from April 30 – May 4 at the Tap Gallery. By Sophocles, translated by Seamus Heaney, directed by Chris McKay.

One of the first questions I ask when it comes to restaging classic works like Antigone is the question of relevance. Why this play? Why now? What is the significance? Of course, “interesting intellectual exercise” is a perfectly valid reason, but for a play to truly strike the mark, there needs to be some sort of resonance.

In this sense, if one has only the canon of Greek tragedy to choose from, Antigone was a smart choice to put on. The figure at its heart, Antigone (played in the performance I saw by Krystiann Dingas, who is alternating the role with Emilia Stubbs Grigoriou), is a fascinating, complicated heroine. Forbidden by the patriarchy of Thebes, the city of which she was once princess, to bury her brother Polyneices, she is defiant, unapologetically seizing agency. It is a fascinating portrait of a woman in rebellion against an unfriendly society: something which I think many women relate to quite viscerally.

Antigone is portrayed as heroic – that word is explicitly used in this translation by great Irish poet Seamus Heaney. She places honour above everything else, even her own life. Honour is a character trait most often coded masculine (and, indeed, Antigone’s sister Ismene cannot live up to this standard), as is filial devotion. But Antigone is most definitely a female character: subverting patriarchy by asserting agency. This dynamic is one I find so, so interesting, especially considering how many thousands of years old this play is.

It’s a shame, then, that although Antigone is the title character, the play is mostly about Creon, the patriarch whom she defies. This can’t really be helped, given the ancientness of the play, but Creon is significantly less interesting than his niece. The second half of the play is mostly about his man-pain, and it’s nowhere near as powerful as the first – although it is very interesting to see how the patriarchy deals with being destabilised by a defiant woman, something Heaney highlights brilliantly in his translation.

I’ve talked so far about the play: let’s focus now on the production. It is a good one, but not a great one. I wasn’t ever bored, and the cultural idiosyncrasies of Greek theatre were translated well to the modern stage. (I wasn’t entirely sure what the relationship of the chorus character, played by Peter Jamieson, to Creon was supposed to be, but it wasn’t that big a concern.) All in all, it was a very tidy one and a half hours of theatre. However, it was a bit awkward and one note in places, and I felt it could have been imbued with significantly more nuance. Several characters fell victim to declaiming, pronouncing their long monologues with great gusto but only one emotional level. This was particularly true of Brendan Layton’s Creon, who was hard to get a handle on. His emotional arc was clear from his words but not necessarily from his acting: he went from autocratic! to angry! to sad! without very much in the way of transition.

Because the play had this very flat emotional trajectory, it made it very hard to connect with. I was talking about it afterwards with my theatre date, and he said that, “I believed that they [the actors] felt it, but I didn’t feel it.” I agree completely. More care needed to be taken with the show’s emotional tapestry for it to be truly affective for the audience.

(Also, the bit with Tiresias really doesn’t work at all. It verges on the parodic: Tiresias is played by Peter Bertoni as a kind of caricature of a prophet. And whoever decided to put him in a luminescent orange toga really isn’t doing him any favours, especially since everyone else in the play is dressed in modern clothes.)

Overall, though, I think this was a solid production of a difficult play. I very much enjoyed Krystiann Dingas’ performance as Antigone, and I’d be very interested to see how Emilia Stubbs Grigoriou, who was fabulous as Ismene, does in the same role. The most interesting part of the show is its female characters: they are what makes this ancient play resonant and relevant.

Construction of the Human Heart

Construction of the Human Heart runs from April 16 – May 3 2014 at the Tap Gallery. By Ross Mueller, directed by Dino Dimitriades.

Construction of the Human Heart is one of the cleverest pieces of writing I’ve ever had the privilege of seeing onstage. It’s dense and difficult, but it’s also complex, nuanced, multi-layered. As the layers are peeled back and back and back, more and more is revealed.

This is normally where I’d offer a brief précis of the play. The “plot” of this show, if it can be said to have one (it is picaresque, more interested in scenes than in a linear narrative) is relatively simple. Two writers, a man and a woman, are in love, have a child, and lose that child. But to reduce the show to this brief description is doing it a major disservice. There is so much in this play that seems to be about so little.

Writers writing about writers writing has the potential to be – and often is – the height of self-indulgence. What sets Construction of the Human Heart apart is the fact that, although it features writers, it is not really about them. Instead, it’s about stories, about scripting: about the way we script the narratives of our own lives, how we use stories to save us, and how we construct our own emotional worlds, our human hearts.

It’s the kind of play I’d like to read so I could unpick and unpack more of the ideas embedded within it, but the performative aspect to it is key. I’m not normally a huge fan of the Brechtian alienation effect (distancing the audience emotionally from the work so as to force them to think about it analytically) but it was perfectly employed here. Director Dino Dimitriades has mounted a very intelligent production of what must have been a horrendously difficult script to approach.

Although Construction of the Human Heart touches on very emotional issues – love, life, loss – it is not really emotionally engaging. I do not think it was at all intended to be: the alienation effect sees to that. But intellectually…? SO ENGAGING. I was transfixed. I was glad it wasn’t longer (it’s only an hour), because I think it would have become exhausting. The delicate threads of story and scene and art and performativity are woven together here to form a fascinating cerebral tapestry. It made me think, and I think I’m going to keep thinking about it a lot.

If it’s not already obvious, I thought Construction of the Human Heart was a fantastic piece of theatre. It was theatre that had to be theatre. No other medium would have sufficed. It’s a difficult piece – do not go along if you simply want to be entertained – but I thought it was so, so fascinating. And the production does the script justice. If this is indicative of the level of work they’re producing, I’ll be extremely excited to see what Apocalypse Theatre Company do next.

High Windows, Low Doorways

High Windows, Low Doorways (subtlenuance) runs at the Tap Gallery from March 19 – 30. Written by Jonathan Ari Lander, Noelle Janaczewska, Katie Pollock, Alison Rooke, Mark Langham, Ellana Costa and Melita Rowston. Directed by Paul Gilchrist.

High Windows, Low Doorways is a series of monologues loosely focused around the theme of spirituality. Like many of subtlenuance’s productions, it’s layered and complex. There is a lot in this show to mull over. I thought it was beautifully curated and well performed.

 One of the things I liked the way in which the monologues often seemed to be in conversation with each other – not necessarily literally, but thematically. As a result, I thought the best way to write this review was in conversation with my theatre date, my friend Martin.

JODI: Hi Martin.

MARTIN: Hi Jodi.

JODI: So we’ve just been to see High Windows, Low Doorways. Tell me your initial impressions.

MARTIN: Um –

JODI: I won’t put the um in.

MARTIN: No, don’t put the um in.

JODI: Actually, I think ‘um’ might be a good place to begin. When approaching a subject as broad and intimidating as spirituality, our first instinct is often to say ‘um’.

MARTIN: Indeed. I was surprised by the lack of… religious content… or, content I would associate with ‘spirituality’ in my own concept of the term.

JODI: Can you explain that for me a little further?

MARTIN: Um…

JODI: Sorry, I realise this is a totally intimidating exercise. But then, religion is intimidating.

MARTIN: I didn’t identify the characters on stage as spiritual as such or the stories that they were telling as inherently spiritual. And I guess I was expecting people who were more religious in a day to day sense of the word. I think what we got was people explaining aspects of their lives that they loosely associate as spiritual. And… I had a very sort of spiritual childhood and half of my teenage years were the same and… um… yeah. I thought we would experience people who had more of a day to day connection with the spiritual. But it was something else.

JODI: Not being especially spiritual myself, I found the pieces I connected with most were the ones associated with spirituality and childhood – I went to a Catholic primary school and so a lot of that resonated with me very strongly. However, I’m not sure whether spirituality per se was actually what the focus was. I feel like more of it – and maybe this ties into you not feeling the experiences related as particularly spiritual – was more to do with ritual than with actual belief. Would you agree?

MARTIN: Absolutely.

JODI: There’s a concept in Islam that I’ve always quite liked when applied to religion more broadly. They distinguish between islam – the vertical relationship between person and god – and iman – the horizontal relationships between members of a religious community. I feel like what was explored here was much more iman, and I feel like ‘spirituality’ would be much more islam – a personal, rather than communal experience.

MARTIN: Yes. And it is interesting to note that I think every story that was told in this piece of theatre involved someone’s relationship with a family member or friends – in one case, a teacher at school. They all connected with this theme of spirituality through people within their own social or community networks.

JODI: Totally true. One was about a guy and his grandma, another about a Lao girl and her culture, another about an oppressively discriminatory school experience… but not very much about gods or actual personal belief. And I wonder whether that was the thing missing. The only real gesture towards gods we got were hymns, and a lot of the time, they rang quite hollow for me. What did you think?

MARTIN: Yes, I thought of the hymns as theatrical embellishment – a nice way to break up the style of presentation. But not a moment of… spiritual connection or… prayer, I guess? In the way that I’ve experienced it from childhood.

JODI: That was what was missing, wasn’t it? That notion of prayer?

MARTIN: Yes. I would agree with that.

JODI: Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, I find it quite interesting that most of the associations with this theme were ritualistic – that is, social – rather than individual or personal. I wanted that notion to be explored more, unpacked and unpicked, I guess. But in this medium, where you have seven different writers creating seven different pieces, I wonder how much room there was to do that.

MARTIN: I see that point of view. And I also – from my own personal experiences, feel like that [individually spiritual] aspect of religion is becoming more and more rare in our society. Personally, I feel that this reflects my own journey that I’ve taken in life away from that personal relationship with gods towards a more communal one.

JODI: I wonder what this says about communities. Do we in fact worship our communities in a religious sense? I don’t really know.

MARTIN: I think that my own personal relationships have replaced for me that thing that the religious aspect of my childhood fulfilled, so I would support that.

JODI: So would the show, I think. There was a lot of loneliness there. Would you agree?

MARTIN: Yes. There was a lot of the single person reflecting on memories of relationships but doing so in such a way that they felt like they were alone even though they were communicating to the audience.

JODI: Personally, I found the piece set in a Christian high school quite affecting, probably because I could relate to it – that basically was my school experience. Were there any that stood out to you in particular?

MARTIN: I did relate to that one as well, having gone to a religious school. I really connected with the story about a person who was having a bad year and kept finding feathers in various places and that moment where she just spills everything in a prayer in a Buddhist temple… I related to that moment where you just break down and spill everything as a last resort as an effective way of dealing with that kind of situation.

JODI: That one took me back to a moment when I was in Malaysia a few years ago and I did something similar – though nowhere near as dramatic. I remember being in a Buddhist temple and hanging a kind of wish ribbon on a tree and just really sincerely imbuing it with wishes about all these worries I had and… it seems quite minor in the scheme of my life, you know, but it was one of those moments that sticks in your mind.

MARTIN: I had a very similar experience in a church in Poland. I do remember it quite vividly… I do think it was a turning point for me. It might have been the last time I really prayed.

JODI: Which is why I found it so interesting that this show focused so much on ritual – rituals stay with us, even if belief does not. I think that was really the common theme echoed throughout, and it resonated with me.

MARTIN: Me too.

JODI: Any closing remarks you want to make about the show?

MARTIN: It’s interesting having a conversation about it because I feel like the impact for me has been felt more on reflection than during the performance. Maybe that’s a credit to the show.

JODI: I think it’s a thought provoking show – maybe not one that you’re glued to the whole time, but definitely one that you have to mull over afterwards. Thank you for chatting with me post-show, Martini.

MARTIN: Pleasure, McAlister.

Cristina in the Cupboard

Cristina in the Cupboard (subtlenuance) runs at the Tap Gallery from November 6 – 17 2013. Written and directed by Paul Gilchrist.

I found Cristina in the Cupboard both deeply fascinating and profoundly troubling. For the eighty five minutes of the show, I found myself mesmerised (although I should point out that this was not the experience of my theatre date, who told me afterwards she found some parts of the show very dull). However, it wasn’t mesmerising in an immersive sense. The show raised questions for me, structural and societal questions, which I don’t think it ever resolved. It made me think, and think deeply, and in the case of this particular show, I think this is potentially both good and bad.

I should point out that while Cristina in the Cupboard belongs to a kind of epic genre – it is in many ways a quest narrative, a journey to and through the underworld – it is also a small story. It is the story of one single protagonist, Cristina (Sylvia Keays), who has locked herself away in a cupboard (or is it?). Her family and friends implore her to come out, both as themselves and as characters in her own mind, but Cristina will not or cannot emerge, not until she has found the answers that she seeks.

But saying this – noting that this is a small story – there was a lot I found troubling about Cristina in the Cupboard on a political level. If the show had addressed these issues, it might have been fascinating, but to me, it didn’t seem to recognise they existed.

The political problems I had with this show revolve around gender (perhaps unsurprisingly, given that I am a feminist academic). Cristina, isolating herself from the world, both compares herself and is compared to world-renouncing sages, sannyasin figures: Jesus, Buddha, Mahavira, etc. This is fine, and I don’t have a problem with it at all, but when we’re considering questions of women and confined spaces, there is another dominant literary archetype that we cannot escape, even if we want to: the mad woman in the attic. Of course, this mad woman is confined by someone else, and Cristina has confined herself, but this is still an important reference point. Even if we think of women who renounced the world in the manner of the sannyasin, an example that immediately comes to mind is the figure of the nun bricked up in a wall, a practice constructed as a kind of divine religious madness. When thinking of women and confined spaces, we must consider that removal from society happens because women have been acting in a socially inappropriate, often anarchic way, even when they are removing themselves from society. There is a profound politics around the relationship between women and enclosed spaces.

Cristina does not think of herself as crazy, although many other characters do: her father in particular uses the word as a weapon against her, and several characters suggest bringing in a mental health professional. Cristina sees herself as a sannyasin, but no one else is prepared to see her in this way. Instead, she is a crazy woman to be dealt with (which brings us back to the mad woman in the attic). This gives us an interesting insight into gendered modes of isolation, particularly when we consider why Cristina has shut herself away from the world and why she comes out. (I won’t spoil it, but it’s quite a personal emotional reason.) Women are not given social permission to go into the desert for forty days and forty nights. They may not sit under the bodhi tree and seek enlightenment. Instead, women are conditioned to deal with their problems not through isolation, but through communication and socialisation. They are not permitted these emotionally inspired vision quests: they must feel together, as a group, and they must support other members of the group who are feeling too, whether male or female.

“Would Cristina have been treated in the same way if she were a man?” my theatre date and I discussed afterwards. While it’s hard to come up with a conclusive answer, it’s hard to believe that she would have. Men are allowed these moments of solitude in their small dark spaces, their man-caves. It is an acceptable masculine mode of feeling. I felt like a lot of the show put on Cristina in this show to emerge from the cupboard was deeply gendered, and this is never, ever addressed. The ending affirms the normative modes of feminine feeling. This in and of itself is not necessarily problematic, but it made me feel like that although Cristina might have achieved some kind of enlightenment in the cupboard, she wasn’t allowed to be a figure like Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, who considered renouncing the world, was convinced not to by Krishna, and had a new and more virtuous way of living revealed to him. Instead, it was kind of like she went to Oz: while she went on a journey and learned some important things, she worked out that home was where she wanted to be all along. There was potential for some really interesting political commentary here, and I feel like these undertones were ignored almost totally: like the show didn’t even realise its own implications.

I also had a big problem with the way female friendship was portrayed in the show as innately bitchy and competitive. If we consider that “feeling together” is the accepted mode of feminine feeling, I wasn’t surprised Cristina retreated into the cupboard if her friends were so terrible. It’s hard to tell how much of this was her perspective and how much was reflective of the friends’ actual relationship, but either way, I found it quite problematic and a very shallow look at the complexities of female friendship.

All this said, there is a lot to like in Cristina in the Cupboard. Like I said earlier, I could not look away. There are parts which are lyrically exquisite and parts which are wonderfully moving, and I’m positive I am reading way too much into it and expecting way too much from it. But at the same time, there is no escaping the political in a show like this, and I feel that on the whole, the thing I will remember most about this show is the missed opportunities.

Love Field

Love Field (bAKEHOUSE Theatre Company) runs at the Tap Gallery in Sydney from October 24 – November 2. By Ron Elisha, directed by Michael Dean.

It was the shot heard around the world. John F Kennedy slumped in the car next to his wife Jacqueline, whose designer clothes were suddenly covered in blood and viscera. Only hours later, as the world reeled, his deputy Lyndon Baines Johnson would be sworn in as the 36th President of the United States of America.

The premise behind Love Field is a relatively simple one: what happened on Air Force One between Jacqueline Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson as they flew back to Washington together with JFK’s body? What did they say? What could they say to each other? This sounds like a fascinating conversation – and for brief period during the hour-long show, it is – but sadly, the execution in this play is sadly lacking. Love Field feels like the playwright read both their Wikipedia pages and then wrote Jackie Kennedy/LBJ shipper fan fiction.

This is not to say that there is an obligation for the conversation to be as close as historically accurate as possible (we cannot know, after all, what happened between these two). I’d go so far as to say that there’s not even an obligation to be emotionally accurate, if you’re trying to tell a story bigger than the two people involved in it – which, when there is a nation involved, you think you might be. But a lot of this show felt like, “oooh, here is this fact about one of the characters! how can I possibly shoehorn this in?” And it didn’t feel like it was trying to tell a bigger story than the two characters either, despite the constant references to the office of president. (In the program, playwright Ron Elisha writes that the play is a part of a triptych about the male psyche. I can’t say that I saw much of that in evidence.) It was about these two people on this plane in this extraordinary situation, and what they said to each other. Which leads us back to the question of emotional accuracy: if you are going to tell a small story about two people, even if that story has global consequences, then it needs to be emotionally believable.

bAKEHOUSE are lucky enough to have two very, very fine actors cast in this piece: Ben Wood as Lyndon Johnson and Lizzie Schebesta as Jackie Kennedy. (Schebesta is, to my mind, one of the finest actresses working onstage in Sydney today.) They try to chart the emotional journey of these two characters in a believable way. They really do. And to an extent, they succeed. You feel for LBJ, the big boy from the South who has spent his whole political life characterised as a hick and who feels terrible about how excited he is to be President. You feel for Jackie, the confused widow who is desperately grieving for her husband and simultaneously enraged at him for his philandering. But they are hampered by a script that takes them into some really, really bizarre and confusing places, not allowing for real organic emotional development.

I think the problem with the script is essentially that it can’t decide what it wants to be or what it wants to do. One of the key questions I think should always be asked when putting on a show is, “why this play? why here, and why now?” I can’t answer any of those questions when it comes to Love Field. It’s not really a political play, but it’s not really a personal one either. It sits uneasily between these two poles in a kind of theatrical no man’s land. It didn’t really make me think, and it didn’t really make me feel that much either – full credit to the actors that it made me feel as much as it did. I think that, with some redrafting and workshopping and focusing, there could be a script worthy of Schebesta and Wood. Love Field, in its current form, is not that script.

Two Rooms

Two Rooms (Ledlight Theatre Company) runs at the Tap Gallery from July 19 – August 4. By Lee Blessing, directed by Duncan Maurice.

Two Rooms is an inconsistent but overall very intriguing piece of theatre. The tiny space at the Tap Gallery is perfect for it. With some firmer direction, I think this could be an absolute bombshell of a play. As it is, it still packs a punch.

The show follows the story of Michael (Nick Dale) and his wife Lainie (Laura Huxley), who exist in two separate rooms. Michael is a political prisoner in Beirut, and Lainie has recreated a room that she imagines is like his cell in her suburban home. This is where she goes to be close to him: like him, she is, in a way, incarcerated. It is also this room which draws unwanted publicity to her when she is visited by reporter Walker (Eli King), much to the dismay of Ellen (Coralie Bywater), the government liaison assigned to her husband’s case. The show explores questions of power and personhood: is it acceptable to place international policy over a human life? how are we to accept it when our loved ones become pawns in a political game? and what are we prepared to do, to risk, to get them back?

Two Rooms begins slowly, and it has uneven pace throughout. The strongest parts of the show are the interactions between characters, especially between Lainie and Walker. Huxley and King deliver strong performances here: their relationship is complex, nuanced, and layered. The show came alight whenever they were on stage together. Where the show descends into monologue, however, it drags. I can’t quite put my finger on the problem here – perhaps the staging is not dynamic enough? perhaps it is a flaw in the writing or the performances? In any case, if these sections were substantially trimmed, I think it would be a better show. At the moment, it feels like there is more fat that meat here. Nick Dale as Michael suffers particularly in this respect, because he has no one with whom to interact. His character really hits his stride at the end of the first act, when he visits Lainie in a dream. Before this point, I was wondering whether the show might have been better if his character wasn’t actually seen, but I revised my opinion. It was necessary to put a human face on him, in contrast to the government in the show, who failed to adequately realise his humanity.

I love the staging of this show, although I think director Duncan Maurice could have been a little more decisive in the blocking. From the moment you are handed a torch to navigate the dark corridor to the black space of the Tap theatre, where the walls are covered in black plastic sheeting, you are immersed in the atmosphere of the play. The set is wonderfully evocative, from the sparse expanse that represents Lainie’s room to the tiny corner occupied by Michael. Sand dribbles down on him from a bag suspended over his head, grains trickling like sands in an hourglass, time that will eventually run out.

If Two Rooms had been trimmed a little – perhaps clocking in at an hour and a bit sans interval, instead of at the two hours with interval it currently runs – it might have been absolutely fantastic. As it is, it’s patchy: excellent in places, but dragging unduly in others. Overall, the good outweighs the bad, and I hope Ledlight Theatre take some lessons from this into their next show. I’m certainly interested to see what they produce next.

Rocket Man

Rocket Man (subtlenuance) runs at the Tap Gallery from July 4 -14 2013. Written and directed by Paul Gilchrist.

There is a lot going on in Rocket Man. Perhaps too much. It is only 65 minutes long, but in that time, it covers art and violence, sex and psychopathy, lies and mirrors, friendship, symbolism, and truth, as well as managing to be incredibly meta- theatrical. The danger of cramming a play full of so much stuff is that it will drown the story. That doesn’t quite happen here – this is an engaging show, which I enjoyed a lot – but on occasion, it treads a fine line.

The first character we meet is the rocket man of the title, Neil (Daniel Hunter). He has met a girl, Veronica (Sylvia Keays), an actor. (Neil is not an astronaut, but he tells that when he meets girls who say that are actors). It is the morning after the night before and they are in her bedroom. She is asleep, and he is going through her things, perusing the detritus of her life. When she awakes, late for a reading (not an audition), they have a conversation about art that spirals into something much different and darker, growing to include Veronica’s flatmate Claudia (Alyssan Russell), who is a casualty nurse, and Claudia’s boyfriend Justin (Stephen Wilkinson), who has known Neil since school. Veronica believes that art – specifically, theatre, her chosen profession – is a tool for good, revealing hidden truths and changing the world. Neil vehemently disagrees: something that ends up revealing a great deal more about him than perhaps he intended.

The narrative impetus of this play comes from gradually unpeeling the layers of Neil’s personality. While he initially seems quite charming and open, as the play progresses, something far more sinister begins to emerge. Daniel Hunter plays this role with aplomb. He is maybe a little too shout-y at the very end, but otherwise, he balances the charisma and darkness of his character wonderfully. I have a feeling Justin might have been intended to be a little more sympathetic than he actually was, and Veronica seemed to be a little slow on the uptake at times, but otherwise, the other characters are also well-drawn and well-played. In particular, the sharehouse dynamic was immediately familiar and believable, with its constant alarm clock beeping and careful negotiation of shower time.

Where Rocket Man falls down is the places where it becomes most overtly didactic. The dispute between Neil and Veronica about art is very important, but in places, it feels like an essay rather than an organic argument. It feels like an editorial voice breaking through the wall of the text, inserting Important Points About Art into a story where they do not necessarily belong. Unfortunately, this happens particularly at the crisis between Neil and Veronica, when we (and she) finally begin to realise that there is something deeply wrong about this man. This should be an incredibly interesting and tense moment, imbued with psychological weight and complexity, but it gets swamped. At one point, Claudia asks Justin derisively if he did not understand the subtext of Neil and Veronica’s argument. It’s hard to blame him: a lot of that subtext is drowned in pontificating about art.

This is not to say that the points this show makes about art are bad, because they’re not – there’s just too much of it. If this play was redrafted again and pared back a bit, I think it would improve both the psychological impact and the actual arguments about art. In this case, I think less might turn out to be more. The early discussion Neil and Veronica have is interesting both on a textual and subtextual level, revealing their characters as well as their views about art – if this level could be maintained throughout the whole show, I think the problem with the narrative being swamped would be mitigated.

Rocket Man is deeply self-aware, and there are a lot of references to debates currently taking place about adaptations and auteur directors and the general theatre culture of Sydney. I’m normally not a fan of this level of metatheatricality, and there are sections which feel like a long exercise in I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE. However, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this aspect of the show. Normally, I find meta stuff self-indulgent, but in the context of the discussion about art, it was pointed and entertaining. Kudos.

Overall, I liked this show a lot. I feel like if the didactic bits in the script were pared back a little, shaving maybe five or ten minutes off the show, then Rocket Man would be dynamite:  powerful, psychologically complex, and intense. As it is, it is still very good, but at times, it runs the risk of collapsing under its own weight.

Electra

Electra (No White Elephant) runs at the Tap Gallery in Darlinghurst from June 5-15 2013. By Sophocles, directed by Richard Hilliar. 

No White Elephant’s production of Electra is a solid, clean version of Sophocles’ classic play. While it’s not especially adventurous, it is simple and elegant, showcasing the emotional turmoil of the participants in this horrific drama.

For those unfamiliar with the classics, a brief précis: Electra is the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. Clytemnestra has killed Agamemnon (because Agamemnon made a religious sacrifice of their daughter Iphigenia) and married his cousin, Aegisthus. Electra is enraged at her mother’s actions, and so hopes, prays, and plots for her banished brother Orestes to come home to assume his rightful place on the throne of Mycenae.  

The greatest strength in this production is its casting. Amy Scott-Smith is deeply compelling as the play’s title character. I would have liked to see a little more variation in her performance throughout the show – she ran the risk of being quite one-note – but she realised Electra’s passion and hatred wonderfully. Cat Martin was similarly watchable as Clytemnestra. As the play is told largely from Electra’s perspective, it would be very easy for Clytemnestra to come across as entirely villainous. Martin’s performance allowed us to sympathise with her character and understand her actions, complicating the moral universe of the show. The scene where she recalls how her husband Agamemnon sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia to Artemis so he would be blessed with the winds that would take him to Troy was mesmerising. (I had mixed feelings about the way the Greek chorus was used in this show, but this is one instance where their actions heightened, rather than distracted from, the meaning of the show.)

I don’t know if it’s possible to do one of these Greek tragedies in Sydney at the moment without the inevitable comparison to Simon Stone’s production of Thyestes.(That play is set a generation earlier than this one – Agamemnon was the child of Atreus, while Aegisthus is the only living child of Thyestes.) One of the things I really liked about that production was not so much the rewriting but the starting point, the idea that THESE MYTHS ARE REAL (all caps theirs). There’s a tendency with the classics, which keep so much of their bloodshed offstage, for the tragedy to be mitigated for the audience: we forget just how violent and horrific these stories are. The front cover of the program for Electra shows Electra covered in blood, and I think I would have liked to see more of this onstage – not so much the blood, but the violence. The actual action of the play is elided – we know when it happens, because we see Orestes stalk into the wings after Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, but we never witness it. It becomes easier to excuse. This production did well at conveying the emotional impact this violence had on the characters – I must especially commend Nicole Weinberg as Chrysothemis in this respect – but I think actually witnessing more of the actual violence would have had a greater emotional impact on the audience. I’m not talking Thyestes-level this-is-so-violent-against-women-we-can’t-actually-have-female-actors-on-the-stage violence – it wouldn’t need to be stylised or eroticised – but I think actually performing the violence would have helped make it a little more real for the audience. It would have brought it home just what a terrible thing Electra and Orestes have done in the pursuit of justice.

Another thing the show addressed through its performances but I would have liked to see explored in a little more depth is this idea of female futility. At the beginning of the show, Electra is very much a Hamlet figure: she is determined to avenge her father’s death (and her mother has married an inappropriately close relation of said father), and she is going to talk about this – a lot. But whereas Hamlet eventually does take action, Electra can only wait. The only tangible action she can make is to tell Chrysothemis not to place tainted offerings on their father’s grave. When she thinks Orestes is dead, all her hope is lost. When Orestes does return to Mycenae, only then can she act. She essentially does exactly what her mother does – latch onto a male champion to rid her of her enemies. Scott-Smith did a great job of expressing Electra’s complete frustration at her inability to act, but it would have been interesting to get an insight into why Electra couldn’t act on her own: why, culturally, female action is even more taboo than killing your relatives.

While I think this piece could have used tighter direction in parts, Richard Hilliar has done a good job with this production of Electra. The Greeks are hard to tackle, and the show’s focus on the emotional complexities of the characters and how it motivates them to act made for some compelling theatre. The show ends on an indrawn breath, the gasp before a new beginning, new action, a new future. I, for one, will be very interested to see what the future holds for No White Elephant.