 Three
Dog Night
Fortyfivedownstairs,
45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne
(Until
25 May)
Attempts on Her Life
Guild Theatre
Melbourne University
(Until
24 May)
Adapted by Petra Kalive from the recent
novel by Peter Goldsworthy, Three Dog Night (pictured) is the story of
two friends, Martin (Tim Stitz) a psychiatrist, and Felix (Phil McInnes) a
surgeon.
Felix has worked with Aborigines and been
adopted into a tribe only to become an outcast, and now, dying, has isolated
himself from his own society. Martin, with his new wife, Lucy (Kalive)
determines to break through Felix’s defences and help him face death.
Kalive’s adaptation is a drama about three
characters differently affected by love and loyalty, as Lucy moves from Martin’s
rational world to Felix’s bleak emotional wilderness. The staging has a
cinematic quality, and delineates the opposing worlds of Felix and Martin on
either side of the stage, while the sights and sounds of the Australian
landscape are suggested by soft yellow light, an array of sound effects, and
most effectively by a continuous live musical score. This is a very impressive
debut work, and a welcome addition to Melbourne’s
independent theatre community.
Martin Crimp’s Attempts On Her Life (subtitled ‘17
scenarios for the theatre’) is an ultra-modern attempt at providing character
detail without a traditional plot or resolution. The text creates a picture of
a mysterious woman who may be a terrorist, a porn actor, a tour guide or an
artist.
That the mystery woman
may have been a terrorist makes the play even more appropriate to a post 9/11
culture of suspicion, and director Susie Dee locates the action in an airport,
where that anxiety is most apparent.
The text is delivered
by 12 actors who do wonders in absorbing it into a scene and shaping the
shifting experience. The story may never resolve itself, but instead of
becoming an annoying exercise in modernism, this production is endlessly
entertaining and fascinating to watch. Theatre, media and popular culture
styles from ancient Greek chorus to The
Blair Witch Project sit side by side without a hitch. Amazingly, a student production makes this
difficult modern classic look easy.
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