Lady Eats Apple
An Australian theatre company prepares for a show of biblical proportions
THE LAST TIME we saw Back to Back was 2013’s Malthouse/stc co-production, Super Discount. But it seems the wait was worth it. Lady Eats Apple, for the 2016 Melbourne Festival, promises to be their most ambitious yet. Artistic director Bruce Gladwin tells Time Out that “it starts at the beginning of time and finishes in the contemporary realm. I’m interested in finding the banal in the epic, so we looked at Genesis, Gilgamesh and Oedipus. Those big stories.” In what could be seen as a major understatement, he says, “It feels really huge.” Not that Back to Back have ever shied away from the complex or the daunting. The Geelong-based theatre ensemble, whose core performers have a range of intellectual disabilities, have built as impressive an international reputation as any company could hope to achieve. Gladwin is spot-on when he says “our shows are richly layered”. There is always a fully realised dramaturgy underpinning their work. Which is not to say they aren’t spectacular and visually exciting, as anyone who saw Ganesh vs the Third Reich can attest. “Part of our process is this exploration of form. We’re constantly asking ourselves how we can push our understanding of what theatre can be. We want to deliver something totally surprising and unexpected, those ‘wow’ moments that audiences will talk about in years to come.” Given that Lady Eats Apple is being performed at the Hamer Hall, with the audience sitting on the stage and the actors performing in a giant inflatable set that takes up the whole of the auditorium, wow moments seem inevitable. And it’s not just visually, but aurally experimental. “The actors wear microphones in their ear canal and the audience listening through headphones get an audio point of view from that character.” It’s a way of upending the audience’s passivity. “At the end of the first act, God banishes Adam and Eve and sends them into the wilderness. I want the audience to feel that sense of abandonment, to really be lost in the space.” ´ Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne, 100 St Kilda Rd, Melbourne 2004. www.festival.melbourne $25-$79. Oct 8-12. ■ Tim Byrne