Image by W McDougall.
Two lost blokes in Ireland drunkenly reminiscing and lying about sex, pain and life’s mysteries for three hours makes for a challenging play. It may seem like a cliché of Irish theatre; in fact, it’s Tom Murphy’s famous 1983 classic, The Gigli Concert.
The O’Punksky’s Theatre team in Sydney has staged it now four times over the last 15 years. As you’d expect, this is a polished, multi-levelled production distinguished by two first class performances. It is also an arduously long and verbose night in the theatre.
Crumbling self-help therapist, JPW King, is visited by a rare new client, a self-made Irish developer who now, his mojo lost, wants to sing like the Italian tenor, Beniamino Gigli. King is in worse shape. An Englishman gone to seed in his squalid upper floor office, he’s practising his own cult version of psychology enthusing about Cosmic Wombs and Existential Guilt.
Patrick Dickson is splendidly fey and mercurial as King, a loose-limbed physical performance which relieves Murphy’s flood of words. King’s one redeeming professional thought is that from pain and depression can come transformation.
As the unnamed developer, fondly dubbed by King as Beniamino, Maeliosa Stafford delivers a nicely stocky performance of coiled emotion, almost bursting out of his suit with anger or sentimentality. The play shifts through his regular visits, with King’s shaky professionalism slipping quickly into boozy bromance sessions of candour and co-treatment.
It’s all affecting storytelling rich with reminiscences which define these lost souls and their demons. It is also stuffed with wordy voyages into pain, absurdist rants through alienation and mysticism, with deliberate lies and drunken hyperbole. To be relished as all very Irish perhaps, but with the truths so played with, it’s hard to stay engaged with this Gigli Concert.
Also dropping by is Kim Lewis who is poignant as Mona, King’s straight-talking, married lover. Her role in the play, and connection to King, is less clear, but Lewis’ final scene is subtle and deadly real.
Against Gordon Burns’ naturalistic set of bedsit decay, director John O’Hare has reborn an articulate, actor-focused production, but one due for firmer orchestration and, arguably, a little editing.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
The Gigli Concert
Written by Tom Murphy
Darlinghurst Theatre Company
Director John O’Hare
Set Designer Gordon Burns
Costume Designer Alison Bradshaw
Lighting Designer Tony Youlden
Stage and Production Manager Erin Harvey
Assistant Stage Manager Emily Baker
Producers Patrick Dickson and Vaike Neeme
Cast: Patrick Dickson, Kim Lewis and Maeliosa Stafford
Eternity Playhouse, Darlinghurst
www.darlinghursttheatre.com
4 April – 4 May
