With David Williamson’s name on the playbill, it’s almost a guarantee that you’re in for a couple of hours of laughs. With Managing Carmen, Australia’s best-known playwright successfully tickles our collective funny bones in a tale about secret selves, desire, confidence and acceptance set in the popular true-blue sphere of AFL business and media culture.
Brent Lyall (Leigh Scully) is a 23 year old football wunderkind, having already won two Brownlow medals. Off the field he lacks the same magic. With the charisma of a wooden plank and unable to score sponsor endorsements, Brent’s celebrity package is in danger.
Enter Jessica (Rachel Gordon) part psychological aide, part publicist, to assess and help remedy the situation. She and hired WAG Clara (Morgana O’Reilly) soon discover that Brent comes out of his shell when he indulges his cross-dressing habit. Hilarity ensues.
Managing Carmen teases out conventions around gender, culture and the media with both comforting predictability and refreshing surprises. At times the verbal slapstick can be a bit heavy-handed. However, the way the play simultaneously addresses expectations as a theme and those of the audience – often the hallmark of a Williamson play – saves it from coming off as a ridiculous farce. Incisively looking at the complexities of tolerance, the message never becomes insufferably preachy.
Scully integrates the various shades of Brent’s masculinity into a likable multifaceted whole. He works fluidly with the varying dynamics demanded by Brent’s interactions with the trampy Clara (infectiously conveyed by O’Reilly), and the alternately peppy and diffident Jessica.
Glenn Hazeldine’s portrayal of Rohan, Brent’s sports manager, a no-bullshit jaded realist, is a standout. Managing the situation and all its players (Jess and Clara included) sets Rohan off into many conniption-induced fits. Hazeldine delivers caustic streams of playing-the-game, icon-making wisdom with impressive gumption. A hunchback gesture in his movements and stress-coping ticks add humanising notes to his roughness.
What seems a bit off-key, in a play about sports and commodity culture in a modern-day world, is the character of Max, the sleazy opportunistic journalist. His 70s-inspired get-up and Machiavellian methods seem anachronistic in a social media age. But ultimately it’s the awkward gap between his villainous side and desire for approval that jars. Hynes does his best with the character and Max’s smarm oozes convincingly.
Mark Kilmurry’s direction injects scenes with an electric charge as the cast react to and play off one another with natural synergy – and the more players on this stage, the more electrifying the charge.
Managing Carmen’s stage design is an apt minimal hybrid of footy oval and office signifiers. Images on television screens, different-purpose chairs, and music cues effectively herald scene changes in this fast-paced play set in varying locales.
For the most part, Managing Carmen tackles the corporate and media spin of a fetishised football ethos – and tolerance of the unexpected – successfully, keeping our interest with its comical twists and humane vein.
Rating: 3 ½ stars out of 5
Managing Carmen
By David Williamson
Director: Mark Kilmurry
Assistant Director: Jessica Sullivan
Designer: Steven Butler
Lighting Designer: Peter Neufeld
Stage Manager: Danielle Morrison
Wardrobe Coordinator: Lisa Mimmocchi
Choreographer: Shondelle Pratt
Cast: Rachel Gordon, Glenn Hazeldine, David Hynes, Morgana O’Reilly and Leigh Scully
Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli
6 December – 26 January
