Not Suitable for Drinking. Holden Street Theatres – The Arch. 19 Feb 2015
Personal stories are becoming quite the thing in Fringe 2015. Here’s another one. Thom Jordan’s mother called him “miracle child” because he survived childhood leukaemia, so he re-invented the disease to summon up miracles as an adult.
What a dishonest man he became. But that’s okay because he was in the dishonesty business. He had become an evangelical preacher. He preached about truth while enacting a great big lie. Problem was that lies eventually are found out and if you lie that you are dying of a terrible disease, sooner or later you have to die.
This liar was hale as can be.
So he cut his losses and quit living the lie.
To tell this tale, Jordan brings a rack of clothes onstage, dons an oxygen cord, and bounds around very vigorously setting up the story with a bit of stage shtick moving chairs about the place to depict his move from Brisbane to Sydney as a teenager. No matter how much energy and sparkling emphasis he puts into this, it is a boring bit of narrative. Worse, the performer seems rigidly over-rehearsed. Writer/Director Julia Patey needs to cut him some slack.
He winds the clock back to his childhood, living in a manse with his strict minister father and his embarrassingly mushy mother. Oh, he was born in the NT and then lived in Toowoomba. Then he got the leukaemia and they moved to Brisbane for treatments. Then he wasn’t special and he moved to sleep on his friend’s kitchen floor in Sydney. Then he discovered preaching.
And, to prove the point, he preaches. And he preaches. He struts and gestures and jumps about waving his arms. He quotes gospel. He repeats and repeats phrases, as they do. And he shouts and shouts and shouts.
When the end comes, it is a relief. One understands that, by default, he found truth himself. And he gave up the lie.
This production is too long and tedious in the delivery of this message. The message is indistinct. Is the man still God-fearing or did he realise that his own fake illness was not the only lie in the business?
The idea of the show is good, but it needs a very serious re-working. It bills itself as “dark new comedy”...“about the nature of religion”. It needs to become that. And cut the preaching.
Just because the theatre venue was once a church does not mean the audience has come to hear a revivalist sermon.
Samela Harris
NOTE: Since writing this review, new information on the performance comes to hand indicating the show is not a personal account. This is not on the program notes. It muddies the water in a whole new way.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/pastor-with-cancer-spun-a-gospel-of-lies...
When: 14 Feb to 15 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres – The Arch
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
