While the world continues to argue the possible demise of books and libraries, I, for one, forecast that nothing will ever replace live theatre. Whether it’s performed to hundreds of people from a conventional stage or in small venues in the round or square – inside or outside – live theatre will prevail.
In the case of The Play’s the Thing, director/writer, Brenda Palmer, chooses the perfect venue in La Mama with its two tiers of only a dozen seats, no curtain and a huge dose of intimacy. The beauty of this play is that it simply invites the audience into a world full of innuendoes, subversion, sabotage, frustration, irritation and put-downs which amount to a good old-fashioned verbal mugging. To enter with too many preconceived ideas risks missing a word or clever phrase, a glance or movement, while you’re busy working out ‘the structure.’ The success of this play’s delivery rests entirely with three high-calibre, experienced actors in Louise O’Dwyer, Maureen Hartley and Peppa Sindar.
One of the hardest things for an actor to do is to have enough presence to command the stage alone without speaking. O’Dwyer arrives on stage with her bag and cut lunch. She begins warm-up exercises, but time passes and nobody else shows. The lights are still on over the audience. Why don’t they turn them off? Is she actually too early or are we? When is this play actually going to start?
Apart from her height, which she carries very well, O’Dwyer excels at minimalist movement and gestures as well as using her eyes to devastating effect. She has established her character and we are well and truly hooked by the time Hartley shatters the mood with shopping bag, sloppy dress and overbearing manner to announce that she cannot start without her ‘coffee and ciggy.’ The writing is clever and subtle, yet it doesn’t take long to understand that this person is the kind of major control freak and attention-seeker that I’m sure everyone in the audience recognises immediately, with reactions that ranged from gasps of astonishment and shock to howls of convulsive laughter. Australia is still, after all, renown for its ready destruction of ‘tall poppies’ and Hartley’s character fits the bill to a tee, and to the increasing frustration of its patient director and equally good actress, Peppa Sindar.
As the play refers to a speech by Shakespeare’s Hamlet, written so long ago, I would pass Brenda Palmer a compliment, I hope, by saying that the skill with which she has written this play took me back to the 1960s to two famous plays – Durrenmatt’s The Physicists and Pinter’s The Caretaker, which left their audiences’ brains similarly scrambled. What these writers took three acts to do, Palmer has done in one. Having seen The Caretaker first in London, I subsequently saw it in New York and was appalled to find the Americans trying to analyse the play and turn the simple caretaker into a symbol of a religious character.
In The Play’s the Thing, you will undoubtedly recognise the characters from your family or your workplace, but the skill of the production lies in removing the audience from one comfort zone to an area of discomfort outside of which one can stand and observe the absurdity of the situation, while laughing with relief that, while we recognise it, we are not a part of it. In short, it’s a triumph! Only 12 seats, so don’t miss it!
Rating: 4 ½ out of 5 stars
The Play’s the Thing
Written and directed by Brenda Palmer
Performed by Maureen Hartley, Louise O’Dwyer and Peppa Sindar
Stage Manager: Meika Clark
La Mama Theatre, 205 Faraday Street, Carlton
www.lamama.com.au
20 February – 2 March
