Play unsettles audience to make them reflect
THIS is the play in which, famously, JeanPaul Sartre decreed that hell is other people. There isn’t a need for pitchforks of torturers: other people can do the job just as well. So when three of the recently dead come together in a tiny, cluttered space with a locked door, no offswitch for light, and no possibility of sleep, ever, you can just tell that things are not going to go happily.
Originally scheduled for earlier in this erratic year, Arcade Theatre’s production, directed by Shaun Swain, uses the very small set to emphasise the play’s claustrophobia. The room in which the action takes place is cluttered and unattractive, and noone can take even three paces in the same direction.
After a few attempts at some sort of politeness the inhabitants, none of whom is particularly nice, get stuck in. Dead they may be, but that’s no reason not to attack any shreds of selfrespect the others may still be harbouring. Tempers flare, alliances and rivalries form and evaporate, noise levels go up, the pretensions that somehow supported the characters’ earthly lives are punctured, and vilification reaches artform levels. Each of them will have to exist not only with themselves, which is bad enough, but with the others. Forever.
Kathleen Kennedy is outstanding as former postal worker Inez, who specialises in mockery. Estelle and Garcin, played by Marea Colombo and Isaac Martyn, are more sympathetic, but not much. Special mention must be made of Shannon McCabe’s performance as the elegant Valet, combining the supercilious air of the most snobbish waiters with finely calibrated mischief.
Hyperactive and unsettling, the production is intensely interesting and at times deeply involving. The 25odd audience was highly appreciative but also, I observed, happy to escape the enclosed space and return to their normal Dunedin lives.
OUT of all the solo performances I’ve ever seen, this must be one of the longest. It’s also one of the best.
In just over two hours, we get to know the many characters in Bruce Mason’s classic New Zealand play, from the unnamed 12yearold who is the central character and his conventional family to the residents of their small seaside town. They include the comical policeman, the English teacher who doesn’t recognise creativity when it’s staring him in the face, the church minister whose egotism won’t allow a troubled boy to pray, the respectable women with their petty snobberies, and Firpo, the simpleton whose painful ambition dominates the second act.
Matt Wilson is, simply, brilliant. Wonderfully expressive, he brings all of these people alive, fully engaging the closequarters audience for every second, and is especially good at conveying the impetuousness, exhilaration and selfbelief that go with being a kid. Projected images, recorded sound and a chair supply everything else.
The New Zealand of the late 1930s seems faded, small and remote, but some aspects, such as social inequality, reverence for sport at the expense of culture, and reluctance to engage with the person who seems different or difficult are all too familiar. The slowpaced life of the beach community, similarly, is something most of us can relate to, either through experience or just from being a Kiwi.
A nice touch was provided in the interval when members of Wow! Productions brought in a tea trolley, poured tea for the 40strong audience and handed around wrapped sweets similar to those mentioned in the play.
Directed by Lisa Warrington, this production of one of our country’s most performed and most respected plays is a triumph. The season will run until November 15, with performances around the greater Dunedin area and in Oamaru. Thanks to generous funding from Creative New Zealand, entry is free.
Bookings are advisable.