The Secret Death of Salvador Dali
By Stephen Sewell
Stables Theatre, Sydney
March 24 to April 17
REVIEW BY BRENDAN DOYLE
In the foyer, a violinist in dinner suit and angel wings plays sitting in a suspended picture frame. You climb the stairs into the intimate Stables space and walk into a surrealistic set. Drawers stick out of the walls, reminiscent of Dali's Burning Giraffe paintings. In the middle of the space, a huge off-white turd shape is coiled.
The lights come up and the turd has become Dali's death bed, in which he rails at the world for not acknowledging his true genius. His own world has contracted to a series of hallucinations and nightmares.
From here on, the life of the surrealist artist unfolds in an outpouring of manic, outrageous, bawdy and touching scenes that move frenetically between the birth and death of the famous artist and con-artist that was Dali. The show is boldly directed by David Berthold and Scott Maidment.
Actors Trevor Stuart and Julie Eckersley, who are on stage for the entire 90 minutes, and with much cross-gender role allocation, play between them Dali as a boy, Dali's father, Dali's wife Gala, and no fewer than 70 other characters ranging from Hitler to the angel Gabriel. The impact relies on the superb skills of these two consummate performers, who bare their all, literally, for the audience's delight.
Stephen Sewell, author of plays such as Myth, Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America and The Blind Giant is dancing, and the screenplay for the confronting film The Boys, is here in less familiar territory. We're used to the left-wing playwright, but Dali was, if anything, politically ambivalent. In the play, he drools over Hitler's sexy tight pants.
So, why Dali? Co-director Berthold says the play is about how hard it is to be good in a bad world. And about whether a bad man can be a good artist. The play is also a celebration of life, even if seen through the murky prism of Dali's fevered brain. The play's energy is irrepressible, like Dali's delusions.
Griffin Theatre Company commissioned the play before 1997 but chose not to stage it "because they regarded it as too disgusting and unbalanced", Sewell writes. So he decided to produce it himself in a tiny theatre in Fitzroy. Seven years later, after successful seasons in Edinburgh, Adelaide and Brisbane, Griffin has finally invited the play back into the Kings Cross theatre, in a very enjoyable production.
If nudity and coarse language don't offend, you can see the show on Monday nights for whatever you can afford, or $20 any night for under 30s.
From Green Left Weekly, March 31, 2004.
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