Chamber Theatre, in two parts: Dissident, Goes Without Saying and With Nina It's Different
By Michel Vinaver
Public Works Theatre Company
The Lookout Theatre, Sydney
Bookings 9331 6351
Review by Brendan Doyle
This double bill by contemporary French playwright Michel Vinaver is well suited to the Lookout Theatre, the most intimate theatre space in Sydney. Located above a pub in Woollahra, it is no bigger than a large living room.
The founders of the Lookout wanted to break down the physical barrier between actors and audience. The result is the feeling of being a fly on the wall. And in the case of these two plays, you often feel like squirming — it's too close to the bone.
The translation by Paul Dwyer, who also acts in the second piece, works beautifully, and was done in collaboration with Vinaver himself.
The first part, Dissident, Goes Without Saying, is set in the 1970s. Helen and her son Philip, about 20, live together in a modest apartment. Philip, unemployed, spends his time at home lying around playing records.
The two are stuck with each other. When his mother nags him about getting a job, he begins spending more time away from home, but eventually announces he has a boring assembly line job in a car factory.
For a while, they have money. Then Helen starts suspecting something. Philip has begun to disengage from the relationship. Their life together is unravelling.
No violence, not much physical movement; it all happens in the silences between the words. This is Vinaver's magic, to have the audience make imaginative leaps during the blackouts that separate the very short scenes.
Daniel Dinnen as the son is intriguing, menacing, always on edge. Marta Kiec-Gubala came across to me as perhaps a little too cool as the long-suffering mother. Also, she doesn't look old enough.
The second part of the evening is called With Nina It's Different. Two brothers, played by Paul Dwyer and Christopher John Snow, share a house that is filled with the ghost of their departed mother.
They live a dull, stultifying life. Then Nina (Chris Murphy) arrives. Passionate, devil-may-care, she crashes into their lives with joie de vivre and spontaneity. And she loves both of them, in every way. There is a scene in a bathtub that leaves little to the imagination, especially from this close range.
Public Works, an ensemble of five performers, was set up in 1992, and has developed its own style of collaborative performance in which actors also take on the role of director. Influenced by Augusto Boal's work, among others, they like to investigate social justice issues, but focus on individual experiences.
I found Chamber Theatre refreshing and inventive, the performances well controlled, possibly a little too well. The actors can afford to let go a bit more.
This is not political theatre in the narrow sense. Vinaver, who in a past life was a top executive in Gillette France, lets us take away our own conclusions about the society he portrays in a rather indirect fashion.