Directed by the Malthouse Theatre’s Artistic Director, Marion Potts, Hate is the company’s opening production of their 2013 season. It is not a successful one.
On a stormy weekend in Gippsland, the Gleason family reluctantly assembles at Ravenswood, their ancestral home, at the order of their patriarch, John (William Zappa), a successful businessman, politician, and aspiring Prime Minister. It will not be a happy gathering.
Disenfranchised daughter Celia (Sara Wiseman), wastrel son Michael (Ben Geurens) and his sharebroker brother Raymond (Grant Piro) are puzzled as to why they have been summoned; each has secrets to hide, from their father and one another. Equally in the dark, but striving to put a positive spin on things, is their well-mannered and fussy mother, Eloise (Glenda Linscott). Before the weekend is over old wounds will have been savagely re-opened and the Gleason family will be forever changed – and so too, perhaps, the course of the country’s destiny.
Written for the 1988 Australian Bicentenary, Stephen Sewell’s Hate is a scathing assault on political ambition and demagoguery. It has not dated well. The simplistic plot is overblown, and its central message about the corrupting influence of wealth and power is unsubtly hammered home. The characters are two dimensional and their actions are manipulated to suit the playwright’s needs – events happen conveniently, artificially, not as a natural result of the characters’ actions. The dialogue is blunt, albeit occasionally scabrously coruscating. Nor does the play pass the Bechdel Test – here, women exist only to talk about the men in their lives.
As Celia, Wiseman gives the sort of performance where you can actually see her acting; her emotional states feel contrived rather than believable, and her story arc strains credibility. Geurens drifts about as the drug-abusing younger son, Michael, uttering barbed comments with impunity but failing to connect with his character’s bruised soul; he comes across as petulant rather than broken. Equally underwhelming is Grant Piro as the scheming yuppie of the family; it’s a bloodless performance which never successfully conveys Raymond’s anger and ambition. Linscott does her best with an underdeveloped character; only Zappa, as the monstrous, manipulative John Gleason really impresses, though even some of his more aggressive moments seem a little overblown.
Collectively, the cast never seem to connect with one another – they lack the chemistry of a real family, even a dysfunctional one – and as director, Potts must ultimately take the blame for this, and for their unconvincing performances.
Dayna Morrissey’s minimal set design is striking; the stage itself resembles the decking of an outdoor patio, with a central 1970’s-style fire-pit or barbeque gaping in the midst of it all like the entrance to hell. On a raised plinth at one end of the stage a chair sits like a throne; as the play opens and the family arrive at the country estate it is covered, ghostlike, by a dust cloth, as is the only other seating on stage, a single footstool. The other main set elements are a number of drinks trolleys containing dozens of spirit bottles, giving the immediate impression that this is a family with a lot of sorrows to drown.
Russell Goldsmith’s sound design, dominated by rain and thunder and the chirping of crickets, is strong, as is Paul Jackson’s lighting design. The staging is impressive, a combination of traverse and in-the-round, though consequently the seating arrangements mean that audience members must occasionally crane their necks to see action or entrances at either end of the extended stage – if they do not, potentially powerful moments are drained of energy and impact.
A morality play about Australian politics filtered through the gauze of the Australian Gothic, Hate does not impress. It marks a depressing start to the year for the Malthouse Theatre Company – one hopes that successive productions quickly lift the bar.
Rating: 2 stars out of 5
Hate
By Stephen Sewell
Directed by Marion Potts
Set & Costume Design: Dayna Morrissey
Lighting Design: Paul Jackson
Sound Design: Russell Goldsmith
Cast: Ben Geurens, Glenda Linscott, Grant Piro, Sara Wiseman and William Zappa
Duration: Two hours 30mins (including interval)
Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne
20 February – 8 March
