Presented by Out of the Square (OOTS) and Burilda Productions
Reviewed Saturday 2nd July 2011
Venue: Star Theatres, 145 Sir Donald Bradman Drive, Hilton
Season: For dates, locations and booking information see the OOTS web site
Duration: 2hrs 20min incl interval
Tickets: All tickets $20
Patrick Marber's award winning third play, dating from 1997, looks at the ever changing relationships between four people, Alice, a young stripper, Anna, a photographer, Dan, a would-be author who works as an obituary writer, and Larry, a dermatologist. The play takes us through four and a half years, looking at major change points in their relationships in a dozen scenes.
The two women swap to and fro between the two men, driven by love, lust, control, power play and mind games. Any student of Eric Berne's system of Transactional Analysis and Game Analysis would have a field day analysing this quartet, with much of their interaction being in the third degree games category, likely to have disastrous consequences. [Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships, Eric Berne, 1964]
A young American, Alice Ayers, is waiting to be seen by a doctor. She has been knocked down in the street and Daniel Woolf has taken her to the hospital, where he waits with her. A doctor passes through and looks at her leg, declaring it not serious and that she will be seen shortly. It is Larry, and he likes what he sees. Dan and Alice end up living together.
Dan goes to be photographed for the jacket cover of his book, based on Alice's life as a stripper, by Anna, a recently divorced photographer. Anna and Dan are attracted to one another. At the end of the session Alice arrives. Anna wants to photograph her, and Dan leaves. Alice confronts Anna about her feelings for Dan.
In a blatantly sex based chat room Dan pretends to be a woman, giving his name as Anna, and sets up a date with Larry as a joke. Larry attends at the appointed time and place but, by chance, Anna, the photographer, is there. After some confusion, they end up together, eventually marrying. From here on it all becomes more and more complex, sordid and often unpleasantly manipulative, with a tragic conclusion and with none of them together any longer. The closer they try to get to one another, the further apart they become.
This should be a hectic roller coaster ride of emotions and relationships, from love to hate, tenderness to violence, from anger to lust, hilarity to tears and all points in between but, on opening night, all of these levels and interactions were there only part of the time.
The cancellation of the first performance, that was due to occur at Noarlunga the night before, may have thrown the cast a little, as there was a lack of intensity to begin with, suggesting a certain degree of insecurity. The lines and moves were all there, but the characters were not there consistently, often slipping into mechanical acting, particularly in the first act. The second act picked up and we could see the potential in this production, but it was not yet fully developed on opening night.
Perhaps, too, it had something to do with the fact that they were playing older characters and had some difficulty in relating to them. We get a more accurate idea of the characters' true ages when Larry is watching Alice at the strip club and he mentions that he used to go to that same place twenty years earlier, when it was a pop music club. He jokes that, when he was in flares, she was in nappies. This makes his age near 40, various points in the play suggesting that Anna and Dan are similar ages, and it makes Alice about 20, which is the only character close to the ages of the actors.
All that is not to say that this is a bad production. It has a lot to recommend it. It could, however, be better with more consistent characterisations, which would then allow more of the subtext to become clear.
Adam Balales plays Dan and allows us to see a man frustrated by his failure as a writer, and at life in general. Balales continues this approach, showing how Dan is also a failure in love and his relationships with other people in general.
Rowan Elliott Hopkins is Larry, presenting us with a man who is educated, working in a respected profession, but a Neanderthal beneath that thin veneer. He presents Larry as a man who sees Anna more as a possession, than a wife, and Alice as a tool to get his own way.
Lucy Marciewicz is Anna and shows us a woman who has been hurt and now seems somewhat cold and aloof, acting as though she is standing back and not becoming fully involved in her relationships, yet also showing a fragility and a deeper involvement than she admits.
Carissa Lee plays Alice, and seems to connect with her character more often than the other three, possibly due to her age and that of Alice being close. She gives a bright, energetic young woman who appears to know what she wants and where she is going, in control of her life, but there is room for doubt.
No doubt there would have been a couple of rehearsals since opening night and, with some stronger direction from David Hirst, and more focus on developing the characterisations, by the second performance, on Friday 8th July, it should see this production lift to where it should have been this time.
Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Arts Editor, Glam Adelaide.
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