Theatre: 1953

1953, by Graham Downey
Exploration @ La Mama
Sat. 14 Nov. to Mon. 16 Nov.

It was nouveau avant garde and all that and I don’t really understand this play but it’s got something very fascinating about it and the story had such charm and put it so nicely—that—that—that—

— Sir John Gielgud discussing David Storey’s Home

My faux-Beckettian dialogue that basically sums up my feeling about this play:

VLAD.:      Ah, Downy, today you learned me a fine thing. A fine thing indeed.
DOWN.:    Me?
VLAD.:      You.
DOWN.:    And what fine thing would that be then?
VLAD.:      O, a very grand piece of learning. Very grand.
DOWN.:    When? Just now?
VLAD.:      This only night.
DOWN.:    Nothing occurs.
VLAD.:      While you were doing that thing up there.
DOWN.:    O, the thing with the light and the book? Is that what mean?
VLAD.:      Yes. That was it. A fine thing indeed. Gielgud, Sir John … his life and times. Troubles … triumphs … bitter medicine taken … sweet draught of success. Wasn’t it all wonderful?
DOWN.:    Yes. Yes it was wonderful.
VLAD:.      Yes.
DOWN.:    Yes.
VLAD.:      I was learned another fine thing this day … but … what was it? What was it? What. I’ve forgotten. Yes. Forgotten. It’s gone. O, but this. This, I shall not forget, Graham Downy. This thing I shall remember.

Comment: Talk about Pop Musik

Wednesday night I saw director Daniel Schlusser’s auteur take on Calderón’s Life Is a Dream, first staged at the VCAM in 2008, now re-staged at the Storeroom (which, people, now has air-conditioning!).

It’s an outstanding piece of theatre that I may write something more complimentary about over the weekend, but, in the meantime, there’s an element to it—something that it briefly makes use of—about which I’d like to say a few complaintive words: pop music.

Item the First:

Schlusser’s play—can I call it Schlusser’s play? I’ve no idea, but the promotional materials make it sound as though I can, so—Schlusser’s play finishes like this: Johnny Sigismund is king, everyone who wants to be married is married and there’s a nu-metalish (maybe DEP?) cover of Massive Attack’s ‘Angel’ trumpeting through the Storeroom’s sound system.

Why Massive Attack’s ‘Angel’? The reason is not immediately apparent, to me, at least. Is it only for the menacing bass line? Or is it to remind us of that scene in the movie Go where the song plays and the dude tells the chick to take her top off (you know, like, it’s the end of the show so we should all, like, go)?

Or, perhaps, is it to remind us of Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History?

Theatre: Trio

Trio, by Dina Ross
Larrikin Ensemble Theatre @ Fortyfivedownstairs
Tue 10 Nov. to Sun. 15 Nov.

Revival of Dina Ross’s Trio, a bio-play of fictional Australian violin virtuoso, Karl Munch, directed by Yvonne Virsik and starring Chris Bunworth. Munch’s life is told in three parts, childhood, personal conduct and professional attitude, the parts being described, respectively, by his brother, lover and agent, each played by Chris Bunworth. The script shows a deft touch and considerable polish. The manners are smooth and appropriate and the disposition even and plausible.

But is it perhaps a little too easy on the old faculties of comprehension? The occasion for the story, the scenario, is a concert marking the one-year anniversary of Munch’s death. The circumstances of his passing were somewhat sordid—illegal drugs, an affair and erotic asphyxiation gone wrong are all hinted at.  These details are described generically as mysterious. That’s the hook: the promise of an insight into his death. “Felix … where are you?” is the opening gambit (was it rumpy pumpy with a certain nineteenth century German composer that did him in?)

While dressing for the evening’s memorial performance, Bunworth’s three characters lucidly divulge, in an expertly handled braid, so much as they know of the dead star, each being interviewed by an unrealised inquisitor, apparently somewhere out behind the fourth wall.