Stage Door
It's been a busy weekend already, with the Rabbitohs last night and then today, only enough time to get the laundry out, before going to a matinee of The Removalists, a play by David Williamson, playing at the Sydney Theatre Company, down in the Rocks. For a 1970's play, it's surprisingly undated, although there is a tone there yet, both in its focus and in its language, but as it's set in Melbourne, maybe there's enough regionalism that I oughtn't to be too hasty. (Still, for all the wide distances that separate the major cities of the country, unlike America, there's little difference in accent, tone, or culture, Queensland under Joh not withstanding.)

This is a brutal work, and for the life of me, I can't see how the actors overcome the difficulties of the play or the production. I guess that's just what they do. The stage is no larger than my lounge room, and surrounded on three sides by tiered seating. It was not a sold-out crowd, maybe just 85-90%, but still, with the lighting, this is not a case of the actors unable to see the audience. Nevertheless, the operated without undue acknowledgment.

I say "undue acknowledgment" because the play itself is one that very much seeks to engage the audience in a knowing, if passive participation. In many ways, like the professional removalist brought it during the action, and, even, like the other major participants in the action onstage, one way or another, we are complicit in what occurs. This is a play of witnessing, much in the Christian sense.

It's terrible, fierce, brutal, and very challenging, and the humor throughout only makes those elements that much more difficult to address, walking out into the harbour ambiance.

The Brooklyn Academy's "Next Wave" festival was always my way of ensuring I got enough dance and drama and music experientially, as opposed to my more "passive" intake of books and CD's and movies, and I haven't found anything really comparable here in Sydney (although Nick Cave's "All Tommorrow's Parties" would have been an excellent equivalence if I hadn't been in Melbourne at the time), so it took the fact that my upstairs neighbor is a lead actor in this play for me to get out to it, even though the mere fact that Cate Blanchett and her husband, Andrew Upton, are running the Sydney Theatre Company ought to have been reason enough to go. Ash was terrific and took a horrific beating (yeah, stage-y, but it's on-stage, isn't it, not like the movies). The performances weren't all around great - I didn't think the women were notably good - but the Sergeant and Ash, as Kenny Carter, stood out.