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Enlightenment
Presented by: Melbourne Theatre Company
Venue: Fairfax Studio at The Arts Centre
Reviewer: Adam Rafferty - TP Editor
Date Reviewed: 13th June 2007
L-R:
Caroline Brazier, Sarah Peirse, Grant Cartwright, Nicholas Bell,
Beverley Dunn, Lewis Fiander; Photo: Jeff Busby
Looking to repeat the success they had in 2004 with Shelagh
Stephenson’s The Memory of Water, also directed by Julian
Meyrick, the MTC have now produced the author’s latest piece,
Enlightenment, a story that asks the question of what is worse –
no information or false information.
The play opens with Lia and Nick (Sarah Pierse and Nicholas Bell), a
couple whose twenty-year old son Adam has gone missing while
travelling throughout South East Asia. After not hearing from him
for several months, they are desperate for any kind of lead, but
they each cope with the situation in very different ways. Nick fears
the worst and is ready to assume Adam is dead, whereas Lia refuses
to relinquish to that possibility – so much so that she turned to a
psychic, Joyce (Beverley Dunn) for enlightenment. Joyce, who would
prefer to be known as a “sensitive” than a psychic, locks horns with
Nick who makes jibes about her ‘readings’ being a combination of
facts derived from the readily available information she has already
absorbed and fictional concoctions. This makes for some humorous
banter between the two.
Meanwhile, in his attempt to gain enlightenment into Adam’s
whereabouts, Lia’s father, Gordon (Lewis Fiander) brings television
documentary maker, Joanna (Caroline Brazier) into their home. Joanna
plans to publicise Adam’s disappearance amongst other similar
stories and immediately looks for angles to make his tale a more
interesting one. These tabloid techniques set Lia on edge, but
Joanna justifies her style with,
"I tell white lies in the pursuit of truth".
 Despite
Nick and Lia’s unease at Joanna’s methods, they are slow to refuse
her outright and when Lia receives a phone call telling her Adam has
been found, Joanna’s documentary takes a new tack. However, the joy
the family is expecting from his return twists into confusion when
they meet him at the airport.
Stephenson’s writing feels derivative in many senses, with easy
parallels being drawn to Janet Lewis’ The Wife of Martin Guerre
and Phyllis Nagy’s The Talented Mr.Ripley, but it’s even
more apparent how similar this story is to Joe Orton’s
Entertaining Mr.Sloane, with its manipulative young protagonist,
when both plays have appeared in the same season for the MTC. I
guess this could be seen as programming the season with a theme.
There is even a third parallel in regards to characters who display
sexual ambiguity with Alan Bennett’s The History Boys – so
it’s almost a surprise to see Grant Cartwright playing ‘Adam’ and
not Ben Geurens!
Sarah Peirse;
Photo: Jeff Busby
Meyrick has done a good job of keeping the pace and tension of this
piece levelled so that the subject matter, which is quite full of
despair, doesn’t bring the audience to a similarly depressed state.
The balance of the performances keeps the plot genuinely intriguing
– which it does have the potential not to be – and the poised tempo
achieved demands attention. Tim Dargaville’s musical compositions,
while quite lovely in their own right, do seem to work against
keeping the level of anguish as light as other aspects of the
production though.
 Ralph
Myers’ set design is a conceptual one calculated to reflect the
paring down that Lia is doing to her own life and the ultimate
desolate emptiness of Nick and Lia’s situation. It is interesting to
watch as the set slowly whittles away to what looks like an empty
warehouse. This can make for some slight confusion over the locales
the players are occupying though and I do feel this situation was
compounded by Meyrick allowing the actors to work outside, around
and across the ‘lines’ of the study room at times. Also, the
direction of having varying characters standing in the corner of the
outer room while the action is playing in the study area, even
observing and reacting to what is going on in that ‘room’ before
they enter it pushes the reality of the piece to a more surreal
place.
Miranda Flinn’s costume design seemed to contradict the plot at
times. Many references are made to how hot the weather is in a lot
of the first act, yet Joyce is seen wearing a cardigan in these
scenes meanwhile Gordon appears in a buttoned up suit looking
nowhere near as heat stressed as the other players. Otherwise
though, the costumes reflected well the personalities of the
characters and their styles.
L-R: Caroline Brazier, Grant Cartwright;
Photo: Jeff Busby
Pierse as Lia embodies a classic English professional woman and
mother with beautiful restraint and all the raw, jangled nerves you
would expect. Likewise, Fiander’s Gordon is skilfully drawn and
personifies the sage dignity of a British politician. These two
actors work wonderfully together, but unfortunately do not look like
father and daughter – either he is too young for her, or she is too
old for him. This doesn’t affect their rapport, but it certainly has
an influence on the perceived believability of the situation.
 Bell,
who also appeared in The Memory of Water, adds some
surprising warmth to an otherwise coolly rational character and as
mentioned earlier, bounces off Dunn to great amusement in their
scenes together. Even though the role of the psychic does feel a lot
like pure comic relief, Dunn brings some lovely depth to Joyce’s
readings and in an expertly empathetic way.
The character of Joanna is a wonderful one for all her good-natured
conniving and ability to see an ‘angle’ in everything. Brazier
revels in this droll part and makes a meal of all her scenes, which
is delightful to watch.
Finally, in his MTC debut, Grant Cartwright plays Adam – a character
that twists and turns, moving from one emotion to the next on an
ever-changing basis, making him very difficult to play. However,
Cartwright shows a clever interpretation of the role and adroitly
reaches both the soft and menacing levels of the part.
Ultimately, this coiling play doesn’t provide any answers, or
enlightenment, to the questions it asks, but it does provide an
entertaining evening for lovers of perplexing drama.
Sarah Peirse & Nicholas Bell;
Photo: Jeff Busby
Over 14 years in the advertising game has seen Adam work
for some of
Australia
and the world’s biggest companies and today finds him contracting to
the industry. After growing up in Central Victoria, he was
introduced to the Melbourne theatre scene by a school-friend who had
made a successful transition to dancing in many local productions.
This introduction has seen him go on to perform in numerous
musicals, plays, cabaret productions and corporate gigs around
Melbourne along with providing marketing and advertising services to
theatre and producing shows. While living in the UK he was employed
in theatre management for London’s Dominion Theatre working on the
world premiere of We Will Rock You. His on-stage highlights include:
‘Albert’ in Bye Bye Birdie, ‘Zangler’ in Crazy For You, ‘Cogsworth’
in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast all for Whitehorse Musical Theatre;
‘Neville Landless’ in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, ‘Schroeder’ in
You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, ‘Evelyn Oakleigh’ in Anything
Goes, ‘Vittorio Vidal’ in Sweet Charity and ‘Gerald’ in Me and My
Girl.
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