Reviewed by Adam Norris
It wasn’t a particularly short dress.
It is rare that I would consider this a saving grace in the course of an evening, but then, the premiere of Australian Theatre for Young People’s Tusk Tusk was always going to be an interesting night.
Perhaps it has something to do with the removed location, enchanting as it is with its views of the carnival-dappled waters off Luna Park, but I seem incapable of arriving at STC productions more than five minutes before we are all scheduled to be seated and the houselights dim. There is some kind of temporal distortion around the building; I can find myself on the opposite side of the road with time to kill, yet something happens in the space it takes me to cross and suddenly, the foyer seems ominously empty and my stubble seems to have grown. The Tusk Tusk premiere was no different. I had time to gather my tickets and do my best in downing a glass of water without spilling it over myself and anyone else in a five-foot radius, and no more; tones were chiming; ushers were giving the Look; it was Time.
Our seats were spectacular, which is a point I would not usually bother illustrating were it not for the significance of what lay ahead. We were seated at the very front on the corner of stage left; should any of the actors ever forget themselves and decide to stroll off into the night they would do so by stepping onto our laps. At so close a regard to the actors the opportunity to catch every nuance of the performance is unparalleled. The downside, particularly with the stage lights revealing the immediate ring of audience members in unforgiving detail, is trying to disguise the fact I am taking notes without appearing to be scrawling verse down the inside of my thigh. Were it not for the logistical nightmare that would ensue, I would recommend rotating seating to every theatre house. It would upset the static immobility of the audience, snap them out of the easy revelry akin to relaxing before the television, and present a renewed perspective on the stage each time you found yourself in a fresh seat. It would be like musical chairs, and I’d even be willing to throw in proposals for Pass-the-Parcel and Murder-in-the-Dark if it didn’t stage the risk of upsetting the flow of the performance.
Suffice to say our seats were splendid, and my general trepidations of watching child actors aside, I was anticipating a strong performance and in the end would not be disappointed. My Long Suffering Companion had different reasons to feel trepidatious, however, quite removed from the fear of young children forgetting their lines or of chandeliers crashing down from the ceiling (the general terrors one brings to every performance). She and lead actor Miles Szanto were well acquainted, having had one of those festival-born, sodium-flaring encounters that would have made Jack Kerouac proud. I did my best to reassure her that all would be fine, and it would not be in the least bit awkward. Of course I should know by now that life never imitates art; life is art, and each story will have its way.
Tusk Tusk is a play that delivers the full nature of its premise in stages. We begin with two characters, Eliot and Maggie (Szanto and Airlie-Jane Dodds), and though they are brother and sister their relationship is initially unclear. Friends? Lovers? In the obvious comfort they find in each other’s presence it is difficult to judge, and speaks volumes for the ease with which both actors have with their roles. Mostly it speaks of trust, and as the play darkly unfolds and this intense affection never wavers I find it commendable that both these young actors were able to maintain this relationship for so long. At sixteen Eliot is the older sibling and as such, he assumes that the responsibility of caring for the family is his. Maggie is a fiercely precocious fourteen year old whose belief in Eliot is both heartfelt and ultimately tragic. We soon learn that there is another sibling, the seven-year-old brother Finn (Zac Ynfante and Kai Lewins on alternate nights), with a penchant for crowns and a desire to be Max, King of the Wild Things. The absence of parents is not an immediate concern as this family have just settled into a new home and boxes are strewn about everywhere, giving the children plenty of opportunity to distract themselves and, so doing, distract us.
One of the great strengths of this play is the ability to forget the legitimate fears for the children’s safety as you become caught up with the closed-circuit world they have created here. Shortages of food, money and sanitation, and the lethargy of self-imposed imprisonment are somehow rendered adventurous as we grow to care for these characters and the ambiguous lifestyle into which they have settled. Such is the conviction of each actor that one feels we are genuinely witnessing kids left to their own devices. For the majority of the play the only adult presence is an unseen neighbour pounding at the front door or banging on the roof from the apart upstairs, a threatening, disembodied figure that becomes synonymous with adulthood itself. Where are the children’s parents? It seems clear that not even they know, and as days go by and their isolated hamlet begins to drift further and further away from the outside world the control to which Eliot clings starts slipping away, replaced by the unchecked primal nature I believe we would all demonstrate were the rules of our lives relaxed.
Polly Stenham has devised a marvellous story here (although many have noted the similarities between this and her debut play, That Face), made all the more compelling by the gradual revelation of just how desperate the characters’ situation has really become. But it is the talents of Szanto and Dodds that make Tusk Tusk something truly memorable. There is something plasticine to Szanto’s voice and movements; he gives us the irreverent class clown, endearing despite his flaws. Eliot demonstrates a cocky assurance-through-avoidance, a survival trait that many will recall from their own High School days and which Szanto handles marvellously. His performance was not without flaw, there were times he began reacting to lines before they had been delivered, and his accent was often inconsistent. This, I suspect, was the cost of delivering a brilliantly physical, frenzied performance, and I’m sure these are kinks that will gradually be ironed out.
Dodds, however, was the show-stealer. Maggie is given some of the most difficult swathes of dialogue in the piece and Dodds handles them marvellously, never once dropping the loyal, terrified young teen she portrays so convincingly. There was such subtext to her performance, such a sense of her willingness to believe in the desperate cheer Eliot projects, even as real horror begins to encroach, that watching her was a delight. Again there were some timing issues with certain lines, and both seemed to struggle with certain sections of expositional dialogue, but given this is their debut in a major production such inconsistencies will certainly disappear. Kai Lewins seemed to have tremendous fun on stage – in fact, he made it seem that in doing this play he was having the time of his life – and Krew Boylan (who appears as Eliot’s sudden love interest) did a great job of … well, let’s call her a floozy woman … who has much more depth to her character than is immediately apparent.
Jacob Nash has devised a very simple but effective set, where the arrangement of cardboard boxes comes to resemble a grim city-scape with the children crashing around like Lords of All Creation. Kudos must also go to Verity Hampson for flawless lighting design. However, with the combination of these two talents, something unique occurred.
I am always conscious of actors noticing me off to one side, scribbling away and being distracted from their performance. This time was somewhat more so, as with the exception of intermission there was no point at which I wasn’t clearly visible trying to write surreptitiously by any who cared to look. The same went for my Long Suffering Companion, who happened to be placed right at the intersection of the front of stage and stage left. A model of decency and decorum, we were.
That said, I think we would have got away unnoticed were it not for the rat. That’s the problem with imaginary vermin; they have no sense of space. Eliot had mentioned it earlier in the play, reassuring young Finn that the rat was actually the reincarnation of Hitler and should be hunted down whenever possible. It was a neat little device, helped to assert how run-down their surroundings actually were. But then, Finn notices the rat dashing between the boxes. Eliot is immediately after it, careening across stage under he reaches the exact edge of stage where we were sitting. All lights are on us and I immediately stop writing, hands jammed in what I’m suddenly aware could be interpreted as a very inappropriate position in my lap. He drops to one knee, and in a loud, clear voice, points to my Long Suffering Companion’s skirt and cries, “Quickly, look, Hitler just disappeared down that hole!”
Such is the magic of theatre.
It all serves to reinforce how utterly unique and how utterly unearthly the world of theatre seems to me. There are few fields in which I think I would enjoy myself in such splendidly bemusing fashion, and performances like Tusk Tusk are reminders off that old Hunter S Thompson creedo – “As long as it keeps getting stranger.” It is a play you will certainly be reminded of long after seeing it, a kind of Party of Five meets Lord of the Flies. A spectacular cast, spectacularly directed. Go see it. No, really, just go, now. Get up from the computer and walk away. Sigh. This is getting awkward.
Cast - Krew Boylan, Airlie-Jane Dodds, Marta Dusseldorp, Kai Lewins, Cameron Stewart, Miles Szanto, Zac Ynfante
Director - Shannon Murphy
Set Designer - Jacob Nash
Costume Designer - Bruce McKinven
Lighting Designer - Verity Hampson
Composer/Sound Designer - Steve Francis
No comments:
Post a Comment