Lally Katz, the veteran author of numerous plays, among them the critically acclaimed Neighbourhood Watch (Belvoir 2011) and A Golem Story (Malthouse 2011) has some stories up her sleeve – stories she wants to tell us in person. And so she does.
It seems like a fun idea, promising an interesting and insightful amalgamation of art and life. Katz is both funny and engaging, so it’s no surprise that this play starts out feeling like a comedy gig: Katz tells stories about her childhood, about school, about writing, and it all flows along, sometimes connected, at other times disjointed – until eventually you realise that this is it. That despite Katz’s initial claim that this show is about obsession, love, magic, big dreams and danger – in other words, big ideas – it won’t be going any deeper. What you see is what you get, and that’s not good news, because you don’t end up getting much at all.
Sure, there are the frequent – and well-deserved – laughs, and the odd gem, such as when Katz talks about her boyfriend being ‘discussed at’ by an elderly lady or complains about him ‘deliberately falling asleep’ at the theatre, but it soon becomes clear that beyond that, there’s nothing. There aren’t any hidden depths to this production; it’s all surface.
It’s not that the play doesn’t attempt to intertwine art and life, just that it does so unspectacularly. People in Katz’s life frequently make it into her plays as characters, and she says she has to live everything she writes, with the question for her often becoming: ‘Which version is more real?’ As a viewer, you keep asking yourself the same thing: Is this the real Lally Katz? How much of this is show? How much of it reality?
The line dropping is real, but the affected gestures, the overdone pauses between stories, the emphasised walking from the chair to the middle of the stage and back: are they deliberately awkward and contrived? It’s hard to tell, and quite possibly intentionally so. The minimalist set design (by Belvoir Artistic Director Ralph Myers) has markings on the floor: where the chair goes, where to stand, where to exit. It’s like it’s saying: look here, a play – albeit a play that claims to be representing real life.
Real or not, in the end it doesn’t matter, because eventually you find you’ve stopped caring. The production feels like an overly long book that nobody has dared to edit down to size. The meandering story is third-rate at best: there’s her on/off boyfriend, there’s Katz letting herself be ripped off by two psychics, there’s a ‘healer’ she regularly sees in Melbourne, there’s her writing, her conversations with her subconscious, and a few other things beside, but that’s it. There’s no bigger picture, nothing the play points to or stands for. Anne-Louise Sarks’ director’s notes in the program claims that the play is ‘about complex political questions like: Can I have it all?’ If only it were. There’s nothing that goes beyond Katz’ life or experience. It’s irrelevant, self-centred, self-indulgent, and it starts to bore you long before it ends.
Early on, the US-born Katz tells the story of moving to Australia as a child, and how she once wrote that she loved her parents, her brother and herself, after which none of the kids in her street wanted to talk to her, because, as she discovered, loving yourself may be a good thing in the US, but not so much in Australia. Stories I Want to Tell You in Person is definitive proof that Katz does love herself, and while I for one don’t doubt that that’s a good thing, the question is whether we really all need to be there to witness it.
Rating: 1 ½ stars out of 5
Belvoir and Malthouse Theatre present
Stories I Want to Tell You in Person
Written and performed by Lally Latz
Director: Anne-Louise Sarks
Set & Costume Designer: Ralph Myers
Lighting Designer: Damien Cooper
Composer & Sound Designer: Max Lyandvert
Downstairs Theatre, Belvoir, Surry Hills
18 April – 26 May
Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne
9 – 25 August
