Television Land is a nasty place, especially for the vulnerable. Predators rule and you will be eaten.
Arty, or Moon, as his mum, Jojo, calls him, is a sweet, bright young man with an enormous, unscarred heart beating in his grotesquely overweight body. He may have an above-average IQ and a writer’s imagination but his obesity threatens his life. Reality TV is set to exploit Art’s pain and anything else it can gobble up and regurgitate in a show about his impending intestinal by-pass surgery and whole-life make-over. Arty might gain greater life-expectancy as a consequence, but the rewards of conformity seem dubious.
Playwright Melissa Bubnic has an astringent way with language. Beached, which carried home the Patrick White Playwrights’ Award in 2010, is a witty and sarcastic work. Taking the piss out of the world of the unreflective with real panache and original characterisation is not as easy as it once was: audiences are well-used to having mainstream culture lampooned – stand-up comedians regularly create facile works around such themes.
Bubnic has already shown us how good she is at dialogue in Stop.Rewind, performed at Red Stitch in 2010. She has an enthusiastic facility and flair with language and theatrical form: her works employ a range of structural devices in terms of time, place, space and interaction. She also has an original approach and a vigorously humorous grip on her material and characters.
Layers of depth, poignancy and humanity come alive in Beached. You could argue that the character of Louise, Arty’s Centrelink worker, is overwritten when it comes to her commitment to banality but the love story that develops between the two is subtly handled. The more you get to know Art (the pun of his name is intentional), the more you fear for his soul.
None of the actors overplay their characters; director Petra Kalive has worked with Bubnic before and there is a smoothness to the directing here which allows the story to be told in all its rich detail. Anthony Ahern has a hoot with his foul TV producer character and veteran Susie Dee is splendid as Arty’s monstrous mother. The production also features strong performances from the lead, Damien Sunners in his first appearance at the MTC, and from Fanny Hanusin (who MTC audiences last saw on stage in Melissa Reeves’ Happy Ending) as Louise.
Bubnic makes real theatre; you don’t sit there thinking, this could be a short story, a radio play, or a film – her work is grounded in the experience of live dramatic performance. Beached is an all round original; a satisfying work that explores the revolting nature of modern entertainment culture with hilarity and skill.
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Melbourne Theatre Company presents
Beached
By Melissa Bubnic
Director: Petra Kalive
Set Designer: Andrew Bailey
Costume Designer: Kat Chan
Lighting Designer: Lisa Mibus
Sound Designer: Robert Jordan
Animator: Rebecca Hayes
Cast: Anthony Ahern, Susie Dee, Fanny Hanusin and Damien Sunners
Running Time: One hour 20 minutes (no interval)
Southbank Theatre, The Lawler
22 April – 10 May
