This review is by Alison Croggon, as part of the double bill China Incident / Newtown Honey show at La Mama.
Alison Croggon is a writer who lives in Melbourne, Australia.
This review appeared on Tuesday July 10 2007, on Alison’s site; www.theatrenotes.blogspot.com which primarily deals with all independant theatre reviewing and discussion.
Alison Croggon presently is the Melbourne theatre reviewer for The Australian and irregularly reviews books for ABC Radio National's The Book Show..
Please note this is the Newtown Honey excerpt. For full review pls. log on to www.theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Marty Denniss' Newtown Honey is a complete change of pace. Denniss's first play, it premiered in Sydney a decade ago with the same lead actress, which perhaps explains something about the commitment and depth of the performances. It's a passionate, surprising work, given a sparely imaginative production by Beng Oh, which demands (and rewards) close attention.
Maddy (Lauren Clair) and Loos (Curtis Fernandez) are lovers, caught in a relationship of almost claustrophobic intimacy in which they have insulated themselves against a world they do not understand, and which does not understand them. From the moment Loos appears, frightened and panting, on stage, we know that something is wrong; and the play follows their attempts to remember their pasts in order to remake the present, as they weave together their mutual stories in an attempt to find a truth that you sense is already lost to them.
Despite obvious differences, this play reminds me irresistibly of Kroetz's bleakly beautiful two-hander Michi's Blood, about another outsider couple withdrawn from the world, their future symbolised by a pregnancy. Both plays contemplate the nature of love in ways that would not be recognised by Hallmark; and, as has been said of Kroetz's work, Denniss's play gives you the sense that you are witnessing "a crack-up at the edge of truth".
Where Denniss differs markedly from Kroetz is in the richness of his language; where Kroetz's doomed lovers speak a blasted, impoverished vernacular that leaves his characters lost in the gaps between their experience and what is expressible, Maddy and Loos have invented a private language that articulates their despair and love with a tough, ragged beauty. At moment it segues into moments of pure poetry (and sometimes even verse - Denniss is not afraid of rhyming); but this is a poetry of the theatre, meant to be enacted through bodies, and it is never mere lyrical decoration.
Beng Oh - whose direction I've encountered once before, in the bizarre but effective Shakespearean play The Nero Conspiracy - gives this play an intelligently simple production that permits its theatricality full flower. All the action takes place on a thin strip of carpet at the far end of the tiny La Mama stage, creating a necessary alienating space between the performers and the actors. The action is abstracted - when Loos lights candles, for example, Fernandez simply draws them on the wall - which focuses the attention where it ought to be, on the script and the performers.
At times the density of the language left me uncertain what was happening, and I think it would take a second viewing to be clear about the details. But for me, that didn't matter; I was riveted by the intensity and truthfulness of this production, and the complexities that were woven and unwoven before my eyes. Clair and Fernandez give extraordinarily generous and sure performances, creating the discomfort that comes of witnessing the unspeakably intimate moments between human beings. Newtown Honey seems to me to be theatre of an unusual integrity: not perfect, perhaps, but most certainly exactly what it is, which is not nearly as common as it sounds.
Maddy (Lauren Clair) and Loos (Curtis Fernandez) are lovers, caught in a relationship of almost claustrophobic intimacy in which they have insulated themselves against a world they do not understand, and which does not understand them. From the moment Loos appears, frightened and panting, on stage, we know that something is wrong; and the play follows their attempts to remember their pasts in order to remake the present, as they weave together their mutual stories in an attempt to find a truth that you sense is already lost to them.
Despite obvious differences, this play reminds me irresistibly of Kroetz's bleakly beautiful two-hander Michi's Blood, about another outsider couple withdrawn from the world, their future symbolised by a pregnancy. Both plays contemplate the nature of love in ways that would not be recognised by Hallmark; and, as has been said of Kroetz's work, Denniss's play gives you the sense that you are witnessing "a crack-up at the edge of truth".
Where Denniss differs markedly from Kroetz is in the richness of his language; where Kroetz's doomed lovers speak a blasted, impoverished vernacular that leaves his characters lost in the gaps between their experience and what is expressible, Maddy and Loos have invented a private language that articulates their despair and love with a tough, ragged beauty. At moment it segues into moments of pure poetry (and sometimes even verse - Denniss is not afraid of rhyming); but this is a poetry of the theatre, meant to be enacted through bodies, and it is never mere lyrical decoration.
Beng Oh - whose direction I've encountered once before, in the bizarre but effective Shakespearean play The Nero Conspiracy - gives this play an intelligently simple production that permits its theatricality full flower. All the action takes place on a thin strip of carpet at the far end of the tiny La Mama stage, creating a necessary alienating space between the performers and the actors. The action is abstracted - when Loos lights candles, for example, Fernandez simply draws them on the wall - which focuses the attention where it ought to be, on the script and the performers.
At times the density of the language left me uncertain what was happening, and I think it would take a second viewing to be clear about the details. But for me, that didn't matter; I was riveted by the intensity and truthfulness of this production, and the complexities that were woven and unwoven before my eyes. Clair and Fernandez give extraordinarily generous and sure performances, creating the discomfort that comes of witnessing the unspeakably intimate moments between human beings. Newtown Honey seems to me to be theatre of an unusual integrity: not perfect, perhaps, but most certainly exactly what it is, which is not nearly as common as it sounds.
