Andrea Demetriades and Glenn Hazeldine. Image by Lisa Tomasetti.
Glenn and Andrea return from holiday to discover uncomfortable changes in their European apartment. But when their house-minding friends, Tim and Rebecca, coolly show them the door, this middle-class nightmare really begins. It is also launches a meta-theatrical journey by the prolific contemporary German playwright, Marius von Mayenburg, into how our identities are constantly shifting, truth is a mirage and all is illusion in the eye of the beholder.
Andrea and Glenn soon return transformed into the sexy au pair and her spoilt young charge, with revenge delivered by Andrea seducing Tim and throwing Rebecca from the apartment – but that’s only scene two.
The four actors give their (real) names to a line-up of thinly related characters emerging unexpectedly through the doors. We skip lightly from characters at a Nazi-themed resort to a Nordic Nights dress-up (and a very sexually actively gay elk) to beyond. This is punctuated by short bursts about Darwin, Plato, Nietzsche and whether there’s anyone watching now behind the fourth wall.
Yes, Perplex plays homage to well-known masters of this game, like the so-called Absurdists Ionesco and Beckett and, particularly, Pirandello in Six Characters in Search of an Author.
Mayenburg’s characters may also be lost in a fog of identities and illusions but his skill here is the wit, pathos and crispness with which he dramatises this familiar theme.
The little philosophical rants are contained and even, at one point, interrupted by another actor exclaiming that they had decided ‘no monologues!’ And the actors, and those reacting, segue seamlessly into their shifting characters and new situations.
Sarah Giles, who has successfully directed Mayenburg’s The Ugly One, forges a heightened but engaging ensemble style. Behind the quick pacing and often physical comedy, and even as characters metamorphose, there’s an empathetic truth in these people – even if it is illusionary! Renee Mulder creates a suitably sparse, slightly corporate European upper floor apartment where anything can happen.
Glenn Hazeldine, Andrea Demetriades, Tim Walter and Rebecca Massey are left at the end wondering where the director has gone. With the stage crew toppling the set, the actors, unguided by God or director, peer out at us through that fourth wall.
It’s a satisfying end (or beginning) as Mayenburg’s existential truth becomes meta-theatrical and crashes through. It was fun laughing so much into the nothingness.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Perplex
Sydney Theatre Company
Director: Sarah Giles
Designer: Renée Mulder
Lighting Designer: Benjamin Cisterne
Composer & Sound Designer: Max Lyandvert
Cast: Andrea Demetriades, Glenn Hazeldine, Rebecca Massey, Tim Walter
Wharf One, Pier 4/5, Hickson Road, Walsh Bay
www.sydneytheatre.com.au
31 March – 3 May
