Review - Wild

Melbourne Theatre Company Presents

Wild

By

Mike Bartlett

Director – Dean Bryant

Set Designer – Andrew Bailey

Costume Designer – Owen Philips

Lighting Designer – Ross Graham

Composer and Sound Designer – Sydney Millar

Cast

Andrew – Nicholas Denton

Woman – Anna Lise Phillips

Man – Toby Schmitz

Southbank Theatre, The Sumner

5 May – 9 June 2018

Wild is a fresh, clever, pacey, engrossing work.  In fact you don’t know what has hit you when you walk out of the auditorium.

As a probe of the public/private realm, that highlights just how vulnerable we are to scrutiny in all aspects of our lives, it is very timely.  It suggests that even those of us who have lived only a small percentage of our lives on/with social media are still vulnerable to not having the luxury of keeping any dark secrets in the proverbial closet.

As theatre audiences we are privileged to get to see Mike Bartlett’s work.  His play Cock was produced by MTC in 2014 and more recently by Bakers Dozen (Directed by Ben Ho) earlier this year.  And Bartlett’s Oliver Award winning play King George III about Prince Charles ascension to the throne, complete with ghost of Princess Diana, was given an airing in Sydney by STC in 2016.

Cock it is about identity and how identity is influenced by environment and in relation to others.  Wild explores the shattering of identity due to the destabilizing of the structures constitute society.

Andrew (Nicholas Denton) has the appearance and demeanor of a kind of everyman.   He is portrayed as a person who, seemingly with out guile, blew a whistle on corruption that in turn released Government secrets - like Edward Snowden.  The subsequent fallout is frightening.  Andrew is rendered stateless and bailed up in a generic hotel room in Moscow.  We witness is his destabilizing by two ‘secret agent types’ Woman (Anna Lise Phillips) and Man (Toby Schmitz).  These characters are confusing and disturbing particularly because of the way they talk about themselves and how their stories change.

Andrew’s total vulnerability is palpable.  Yet we feel, not so much for him, but for ourselves as we watch him try to grapple with his drastically changed circumstances.   Having ruptured reality, by exposing some of the fundamental travesties that underpin the mechanics of society as we have constructed it, any reliable framework has been smashed for Andrew.

As Man, Schmitz, with the help of a wacky hair-do, has developed the most marvelously sinister character with indications of ominous power and shifty danger.   Phillips as Woman is no less engaging.   Her energy, commitment and focus does much to drive the performance forward as it twists back on its self and confounds.

Ultimately nothing is as it seems and we, almost too fully, experience Andrews wrenching disassociation.

In many ways Dean Bryant makes the perfect Director for Wild however I feel the obvious is overstated at times.  For example Andrew’s helplessness is highlighted in the middle of the work through a naked torso.  Wild is very energetically and emphatically staged.   I wonder if, as the season progresses and the production matures, moderation in tempo and intensity will heighten clarity.

The set with evocatively strange vivid colouring is designed by Andrew Bailey and enhanced by the shades in the costumes (Owen Phillips) and beautifully lit by Ross Graham.  And sound Design by Sidney Miller is marvelously subtle and atmospheric.

It is such a pleasure to be an audience to actors who are not mic’d.

Pretty much as exciting as anticipated.

Very strong and intelligent theatre.

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)

Review - Cock

Bakers Dozen Theatre Company Presents

Cock

By Mike Bartlett

Directed by Beng Ho

Cast:

Matthew Connell

Shaun Goss

Marissa O’Reilly

Scott Gooding

Designed by Emily Collett

Lighting by Ashleight Barnett

The Stables – Meat Market

11 to 21 April 2018

Opening night of Cock was refreshingly ready for an audience.  There was no evidence of a lack of time spent in the rehearsal room in this superbly directed (Beng Oh) 2009 work by British playwright Mike Bartlett. 

Cock is about relationships, sexual identity, romantic relationships, and performed identity.  At its heart is the suggestion that the act of sex can be isolated from gender and feelings of love, and, an individual’s behaviour can be controlled by social expectations and the coercion of others.

John (Matthew Connell) is in a relationship with a somewhat critical, brittle and sarcastic male partner (Shaun Goss).  They rub up against each other without much evidence of harmony.  John finds himself attracted to, and fatally seduced by, a lively young generous natured woman (Marissa O’Reilly) and they have pleasurable sex.  John is subsequently confused about with whom to spend his future.  The work contains a dated suggestion that children and growing a family is exclusive to life in heterosexual partnerships.   This conjecture helps to define John’s choices in the context of his changing circumstances.  John’s partner is assisted in his fight to maintain their relationship by his father (Scott Gooding).

There is an intimation of woman as predator.   This is expressed through the crazy fears of John - that he is being stalked.  Which could be interpreted as misogyny and a fear of female sexuality.  But that is not to say it is indicative of the playwright’s actual perspective - if the work is understood as a conventional play that explores various points of view.

In Beng Oh’s production the wonderful lack of props, and complete commitment of the actors to ‘being in the moment’ and in very close proximity to the audience, is exemplary.  As the actors are kept on the move time is not spent indulgently and their energy is kept alive and vital.

Due to the elucidating writing and committed acting, fully clothed sex scenes are rendered as engrossing and affectingly sensuous.

Conversations are the backbone of the work and Cock would transmute marvelously as an audio piece.  Indeed sometimes the conversations are almost too articulately express individual characters self-knowledge.  I say this mostly in relation to the female voice.

As John, Matthew Connell brings a light touch and the delicate sincere sensibility of a ‘free spirit’.  Shaun Goss is sharp, crisp and most convincing as John’s feisty long-term partner.  Marissa O’Reilly presents the young assertive ‘femme fatal’ as strong, clever, self aware and deeply seductive.  While Scott Gooding’s Father of John’s partner is complex and profoundly perceptively, resolved and supportive.  The acting is uniformly excellent.

Cock is set simply in the round and costumed with lovely indicative universality by Emily Collett.

A challenging, thought provoking and very interesting work.

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)